
Pass S B ^ 5 ^ 
Book H^ 






By bequest of *^^\^/ ' 

William Lukens Shoemaker 







rA 




The Book-Lover's Library. 

Edited by- 
Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. 



GLEANINGS !N 



OLD GARDEN LITERATURE 



BY 

W. CAREW HAZLITT 

Author c(f " Old Cookery Books 



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xi:w YOkK 

GEORGE J. COOMBES, 275, FIFTH AVENUE 
1887 






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CONTENTS. 



I. Preliminaries i 

II. Literary Antiquities— The Vocabu- 
laries — The First English Work 
ON Gardening ii 

III. Elizabethan Gardening — The Ear- 

liest Gardener's Calendar — 
Bacon and Evelyn ... 22 

IV. The French and Dutch Schools — 

Evelyn and the "French Gar- 
dener " — His •' Sylva " — John 
Worlidge— Gardening in Scot- 
land 34 

V. Herbals, Physic-Gardens, and Bees 46 
VI. The Kitchen-Garden — Alexander 
Neckam and Johannes de Gar- 
landia — The Gardens at Sheen, 
Greenwich, and Somerset House 
— Sir William Temple's Garden 
AT Sheen — Kew Gardens — Gar- 
dens IN and about London in 1691 



vi Contents. 

PAGE 

— Early Catalogues of Plants — 
The Duke of Bedford's Botanical 
Publications 54 

VII. The Ancient and Modern Arbour 

— Grottoes — Garden Life . , 72 
VIII. Window-Gardening — Cottage Gar- 
dens IN 1677 — Influence OF Astro- 
logy — Warming Apparatus — 
Variegation of Foliage . . 78 

IX. Bacon as a Gardener ... 90 
X. Herbs and Vegetables — High 
Price of Vegetables in Early 
Times ^ The Suburbs of London 
celebrated as a Growing-Ground 
— Rarity and Estimation of the 
Potato — Asparagus — Sanitary 
Value of Vegetables . . .115 
XL Fruit-Trees — Home-made Wine — 
Beer — Bacon and Shakespeare 
ON THE Strawberry . . .127 

XII. Fruit-Trees {continued)~-'Y:\\.Y. Peach, 
THE Quince, the Medlar, the 
Pine-Apple, and the Pomegran- 
ate — Introduction of the Black 
Mulberry — Rhubarb — Lemons — 
The Tool-House— Espaliers and 
Pruning— Forest Trees— Ancient 
Survivals — Hooke's " Micro- 
graphia " AND Mosses . . . 142 



Contents, vii 

I' AGE 

XIII. Flora — The Tulip, the Rose, the 

Jessamine — Abercrombie's Works i6i 

XIV. Market Gardens in the Suburbs 

OF London — Testimony of an 
Italian Visitor in 1614 — Nurse- 
ries and Grounds at Old Bromp- 
TON, Fulham, Battersea, and 

Deptford 169 

XV. Sir William Temple — Walpole and 
THE Gardeners of the Eight- 
eenth Century .... 182 
XVI. Bibliography of Gardening Litera- 
ture (1603 — 1800), and of Herbals 
and Bee Culture — William and 
Samuel Curtis — James and 
George Sowerby — The Lindleys 
andLoudons — Cryptogamic Flora 
OF Scotland — SirWilliam Jackson 

Hooker 203 

Appendix 225 

Index 243 



GLEANINGS 

IN 

OLD GARDEN LITERATURE. 




Preliminaries. 

RS. MATTHEWS, in her Memoirs 
of her husband, 1839, mentions 
the gratification which it afforded 
Coleridge, when he came from the Gilmans', 
to visit them at Highgate Hill, to walk 
round the garden and gather a handful of 
flowers to take home with him. 

We know how some of the wisest and 
best of mankind have delighted in gardens. 
Even such an inveterate Londoner as Charles 
Lamb, when he went down to live at Edmon- 
ton, took a pleasure in superintending the 



2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

small plot of ground behind his house there, 
and watched with interest the progress to- 
ward maturity of his Windsor pears and 
jargonelles. 

How affectionately attached to their gar- 
dens and the pursuits connected with the 
culture of trees, fruits, and flowers Bacon, 
Evelyn, Temple, Walpole, and other eminent 
Englishmen have been, it will form part of 
my duty in the following pages to demon- 
strate. 

General Lambert, who was lord of the 
manor of Wimbledon in 1656, was very fond 
of his garden at that place, and grew, it is 
said, the finest tulips and gilliflowers procur- 
able. It is to his passion for this pursuit that 
he owed his place on a pack of satirical cards 
published during the Commonwealth, where 
the Eight of Hearts bears a small full-length 
of him, holding a tulip in his right hand, with 
" Lambert Kt. of f Golden Tulip " beneath. 
He had withdrawn into what was then the 
country from political life ; but, amid his 
recreations as a florist, was doubtless watch- 
ing the opportunity for a return to the field 



Preliminaries, 3 

of his professional work. Next to Monk he 
was probably the most able of the generals 
of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and 
it was an error on the part of Cromwell to 
have estranged him. But to his temporary 
retirement we owe this little glimpse of his 
taste for a pursuit more genial and more 
humane than that of war. 

The earhest human scene is laid in a 
garden. The Old Testament contains 
numerous allusions to gardens. Throughout 
Oriental literature and folk-lore, and in most 
of the stories derived from the East, a 
garden occupies a conspicuous position ; and 
likewise in the mythology of other countries 
we find legendary or traditional witness to the 
instinctive love of our race toward the neigh- 
bourhood of verdure and shade, toward 
whatever vegetation conditions of tempera- 
ture and climate begot. 

"God Almighty," says Bacon, "first planted a 
garden ; and, indeed, it is the purest of human plea- 
sures ; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of 
man ; without which buildings and palaces are but 
gross handy-works ; and a man shall ever see that, 



Gleanins's in Old Garden Literature. 



"i. 



when ages grow to civility and elegance, man comes 
to build stately sooner than to garden finely : as if 
gardening were the greater perfection." 

Modern science has brought our gardens 
to their present state, and the development 
of society evolved from the ancient and 
original idea of plantations for the general 
benefit, of which we seem to have a sort of 
foreshadow in the Book of Genesis, the 
conception of enclosures dedicated to par- 
ticular service. Our nature, modified by 
circumstances and interests, gradually out- 
grew its contentment with the free and 
unrestricted use of the fruits of the earth, 
and each man or each tribe claimed and 
held, personally or in common, the ground 
adjacent to the dwelling or the settlement. 

Centuries elapsed before the garden became 
what we see it ; and at the present moment 
every country is governed in its system of 
planting, and in its principles of cultivation 
and husbandry, by the resources of its soil 
and the demands of its population. 

The dawn of the British primeval life 
was spent amid dark and boggy forests, and 



Preliminaries. 5 

on the barren and interminable moor, in a 
harsh and precarious cHmate, with slender 
opportunities of development within, and 
the scantiest external communications. Our 
knowledge of their social organisation is very 
slight, and is almost entirely drawn from 
the imperfect testimony of Caesar. But we 
obtain no insight, from that or any other 
source, into their mode of preparing such 
portions of their food as depended on the 
cultivation of the ground. 

The ancient English garden was, indeed, 
as widely divergent from those to which our 
eyes have grown accustomed, as the hanging 
terraces of Babylon or the Platonic groves of 
Athens. There was, till the sixteenth century 
at least, no attempt at artistic arrangement 
or methodical distribution. The fruit and 
forest trees seem to have grown side by side ; 
and the flower-borders and beds would have 
fallen very short of modern demands, or even 
of the views of the men who introduced into 
our country the foreign schools of horticulture. 
But the fifteenth century saw something like 
an advance in the direction of separation 



6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature, 

and order, for we hear of the orchard and 
the herbary ; and another useful institution 
was the midden or muck-hill. 

I can do no more within the restricted 
space which is accorded me, than call atten- 
tion to the very admirable picture which 
Mr. J. A. St. John has drawn of the system 
of horticulture and floriculture among the 
Greeks, in his Mariners and Customs of 
Ancient Greece (1842); and, to some extent, 
the English versions of the Charicles and 
Gallus of Bekker will prove of service to 
the student. 

Perhaps the best summary of this subject 
of gardening among the Ancients is that of 
Sir William Temple, in the second part of his 
Miscellanea^ in the very valuable paper headed 
" Upon the Gardens of Epicurus ; Or, Of 
Gardening in the Year 1685." 

Every reader is familiar at least with the 
reputation of the Georgics of Virgil, which, with 
Hesiod, Varro, and the other Rei Rusticcs 
Scriptores, form the source to which we 
must go for information on the subject in 
hand ; and during the mediaeval period such 



Preliminaries. 7 

writers as Petnis de Crescentiis of Bologna, 
whose Ruralia Commoda appeared at Florence 
in 147 1, helped to carry down the old Roman 
traditions and experiments, and constituted 
a link between ancient and modern agricul- 
tural economy. 

Until certain later publications enjoyed 
a long run and experienced a succession of 
issues during forty or fifty years, — even when 
they had been, in some measure, superseded, 
like Mrs. Loudon's botanical manuals, — the 
books on gardening do not appear, as a rule, 
to have had a very prolonged life, or to 
have often passed into a second impression. 
Evelyn's Kalendarium Hortense^ which first 
came out in 1664, and arrived at a tenth im- 
pression in 1706, was an exceptional long- 
liver. 

This fact may be possibly explained by the 
preference of those, who felt an interest in the 
subject, for actual practice, and the appeal 
of the majority of publications to the 
book-buyer rather than the horticulturist. 
Besides, the proportion of persons of both 
sexes, whose education enabled them to 



8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

study technical works, was relatively small; 
and the great commercial success of such 
productions in a sister art — that of cookery 
— as The Book of Cookery, Mrs. Glasse, and 
Mrs. Rundell, may have been due, to some 
extent, to the more general patronage of 
private female buyers. The cook, both 
professional and amateur, has always per- 
haps been more disposed to work by book 
than the gardener, whose operations are more 
dependent on circumstances. 

A notion has, I think, prevailed for a long 
time in this country that Evelyn was the first 
writer on tree-culture and gardening among 
us, just as Mrs. Glasse was the pioneer in 
the literature connected with the culinary art, 
and the author of the Pilgrim's Progress the 
earliest writer of allegory ! General readers 
— by which ought to be understood gentlemen 
and ladies who generally don't read — do not 
care to go back too far into the dim past, and 
for them Mr. Evelyn and Mrs. Glasse are old 
enough ; just as Johnso?i's Didioiiary is, for 
aught they know or care, the earliest book of 
the kind, and Johnson himself as much of 



Preliminaries. 9 

an antique as if he had been the author of 
the Promptiiariiun Parvuloruin. They must 
have their chronological terminus. Their past 
must be a known quantity. It is a symptom 
of an unhealthily restless mind to question 
the date assigned in the common dictionaries 
to the exodus from Eden. 

The truth is, that when the illustrious 
Evelyn began to manifest an interest in those 
subjects with which his name is so affection- 
ately connected, and when the hardly less 
renowned Mrs. Glasse took hers in hand, 
Englishmen had for many centuries attained 
a very fair proficiency in the twin sciences 
of cookery and arboriculture. 

Specialists in horticulture, as well as in 
other sciences, are sometimes apt to be 
jealous of each other, and intolerant alike 
of too much excellence in their professional 
brethren and too little. The author of a 
monograph on the cultivation of the auricula 
gives us to understand that many of the 
gardeners of his time were " blue-aproned 
pretenders," — a curious point, because such 
an article of dress long continued to form 



I o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

one of the external insignia of the cloth, and 
has at last been transmitted as an heirloom 
to the florist's cousin-german, the green- 
grocer. 




II. 

Literary Antiquities — The Vocabula- 
ries — The First English Work on 
Gardening. 




T cannot be very surprising to find the 
firstfruits of gardening literature 
tinctured by the prevailing supersti- 
tions of the day about astronomical influences. 
In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
is the poem oi John the Gardener, written 
in the fourteenth century, and the most 
ancient production of the sort in our 
language. It was to have been edited for 
the Early English Text Society by Mr. Aldis 
Wright ; but the plan was not carried out. I 
regret that I have not seen it. But even at 
a much later period the faith in astrology 
governed the operations of the gardener, as 
we can easily judge from the tract in the 



1 2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

Porkington MS. (fifteenth century),^ entitled 
A Treatise for a man to k?iow which time of 
the year it is best to graft or to plant trees, and 
also to make a tree to bear all manner of fruit 
of divers colours and odours, with majiy other 
things. 

This compilation sounds voluminous, but 
it occupies only ten small octavo pages in 
type. You are instructed what you should 
do under sundry signs of the zodiac, and 
lessons are given in pruning and grafting. A 
good deal of it seems to be abstracted from 
Aristotle and Palladius; but the under-quoted 
reads like a little trait of primitive English 
whimsicality : — 

" Also, for to make that a pearl, or a precious 
stone, or a farthing, or any other manner of thing be 
found in an apple, take an apple or a pear, after it has 
flowered, and somewhat waxen, and thrust in hard at 
the bud's end which one thou wilt of these things 
aforesaid, and let it grow, and mark well the apple 
that thou didst put in the thing, whatever it be." 

Some very fanciful ideas are advanced 

* Early English Miscellanies, Warton Club, 1855, 
pp. 66-72. 



First E^iglish Work on Gardening. 1 3 

here on the subject of grafting, and great 
stress is laid on the use, not only in that 
process, but where a limb was severed from 
any tree, of a bandage of clay to exclude the 
air and prevent haemorrhage. It is evident 
that in the fifteenth century a taste prevailed 
for novelties and hybrids : how to grow cherries 
without stones, how to have peaches with 
kernels like nuts, how to make a peach 
produce pomegranates; and the same in- 
genious experiments were made in the flower- 
garden. 

The first regular treatise on gardening was 
the work, not of a technist, but of a man of 
letters, Thomas Hill, a native and inhabitant 
of London, but at a time when' the limits of 
the City were infinitely more contracted than 
now, and even Holborn was regarded as a 
suburb. It appeared in or about 1560, and 
was often republished. But it is scarcely a 
satisfactory performance, as Hill fills up a 
good deal of his not very substantial volume 
with passages from ancient writers ; he be- 
longed to the old school, which loved to 
begin at the beginning. But luckily he 



14 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

draws the line at the Old Testament, and 
chiefly cites Varro and Columella; and 
whatever the shortcomings of HilVs work 
may be, it marked an advance in horticultural 
knowledge, and presents some valuable sug- 
gestions for the position and arrangement of 
a garden. He recommends that the garden 
should be near to a plain or level field, or 
should be, if possible, on a slope, with 
courses of water flowing through it, and in 
default of this, that there should be either a 
well or a pond within its limits. We find 
careful directions for planting, sowing, and 
other operations; an account of the medi- 
cinal virtues of certain herbs ; advice as to 
hedges, of which Hill prefers one composed 
of briars and thorns ; and two schemes for 
forming a maze, a round and a square 
one. We have learned to identify this as 
a feature peculiar to Hampton Court and a 
few other historical places ; but it was once 
considered an ordinary adjunct to pleasure- 
grounds of any pretension or size. These 
mazes were contrived by the gardener, and 
seem to have been very usually rendered 



First English Work on Gardening. 1 5 

useful as well as ornamental and decorative, 
by consisting of kitchen herbs. It might 
have been judged, from the low growth of 
the latter, that the structure was of a different 
kind from that with which we have grown up 
acquainted ; but Hill clearly says that the 
object was "to sport there at times/' so that 
the rosemary and other plants must have 
been trained in some particular manner, to 
carry out our idea of such a thing. 

The taste for the capricious and fantastic 
in the disposition of the garden and orna- 
mental grounds was probably imbibed by 
noble or rich Englishmen, who brought back 
with them a desire to imitate fashions which 
they had seen abroad. The mazes which 
Hill introduces into his earlier book were 
elaborated by him in one called the Gar- 
dener^s Labyrinth, which he did not live to 
complete, and which was published in 1577 
by Henry Dethicke. But the designs in 
this volume appear to have been borders 
devised in various forms, and not the piece 
of intricacy for persons to disport them- 
selves, and the title-page explicitly declares 



1 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

that the following pages dealt, hiter alia, 
with " divers herbers [arbours], knots and 
mazes, cunningly handled for the beautifying 
of gardens!'' 

These artifices, which modern feeling has 
by no means eschewed, had of course a 
tendency to excite competition, and it was 
the aim of every artist to outdo his prede- 
cessor. As it is not a production which 
belongs to the chronological series, I shall 
take the opportunity to indicate as a curio- 
sity the engraved views of the gardens at 
Wilton, which were laid out probably by 
Isaac de Caus, an engineer and a native of 
Dieppe, for Philip, Earl of Pembroke and 
Montgomery, about 1645, ^"^^ ^^^ ^^ 3,11 
events described by De Caus in a series of 
engravings called Hortus Penbrochianus^ ou 
Le Jar din de Wilton. 

It is, no doubt, to be regretted that there 
are not other graphic representations of early 
English gardens, besides those at Wilton, 
Cobham, etc. In his Gleanings on Gardens 
(1829), Felton supplies us with some highly 
interesting glimpses of the ornamental grounds 



Vestiges of Old Gardens. 1 7 

which once abounded even in London and 
its immediate vicinity ; his pages are pro- 
fessedly experimental and tentative ; and he 
laments that even then it would have been 
probably vain to acquire an accurate and 
complete pictorial view of the horticultural 
achievements and progress of our ancestors. 
The chief difficulty which Felton perceived 
was the cost of properly executing such a 
work ; but to that difficulty is now superadded, 
in numerous instances, a second still more in- 
superable — the disappearance of the material, 
the gardens themselves. 

Let us take an illustration from such a 
place as Twickenham House, once the resi- 
dence of Sir John Hawkins, at a more recent 
time and until quite lately that of Dr. Dia- 
mond, who loved to gather round him all 
the men of taste and culture of his acquaint- 
ance on Sundays. Every one who had the 
entree was at liberty to come every week, 
if he chose ; and the talk over and after 
dinner, which was at half-past three, was of 
old china, old books, old friends, and old 
recollections. 



1 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

The present writer has met under that 
roof Durham and Woolner, the sculptors, 
Hepworth Dixon, Cordy Jeaffreson, and 
many more men of mark in their respective 
ways. But the house and its grounds will 
soon be numbered with the things of the 
past, and nearly all those who contributed 
to make the Sundays pleasant and profita- 
ble, including the Doctor himself, are no 
more. 

But I must confine myself to my more 
immediate point. In the Thames Valley 
Times of February 2nd, 1887, occurs this 
paragraph : — 

' ' The threatened ravages of the builder in the 
grounds of Twickenham House seem specially un- 
welcome, not only because of associations, but also 
on account of the extreme beauty of the ancient turf, 
which, in the times to which we have referred, was a 
finely-kept lawn of exceptional verdure and springi- 
ness. Like stately trees, such singularly rich turf is 
the result of time, suitable soil, and careful conserva- 
tion, as those well know who are familiar with the 
verdant beauty of the lawns of the ancient Oxford 
Colleges. The grounds are also interesting on account 
of an extraordinary and luxurious growth of all kinds 



Leonard Mascall. 1 9 

of old herbs, and a curious fence of sword-blades, 
which are said to have been collected on the field of 
Culloden." 

Such notices as these, brief and imperfect 
as they are, of the numerous seats in early- 
suburban London, more especially in Old 
Brompton, Kensington, Putney, and Fulham, 
are what we should have desired to possess, 
and are sorry to have lost for ever, except in 
a few isolated and accidental cases, or to such 
a limited extent as Felton has rescued them 
from oblivion. 

A conversance with the arts of planting 
and grafting was promoted by a curious 
Elizabethan publication^ which purports to 
have been rendered into English from two 
distinct sources — a French book by a brother 
of the Abbey of St. Vincent, and a Dutch 
one, of which the author is not suggested. 
The English editor was Leonard Mascall, 
and the volume became popular. It doubt- 
less supplied a want, and was reprinted 
several times between 1569 and 1596. 
Mascall, who is known as the compiler ol 
two or three other treatises on husbandry and 



20 Gleaninzs in Old Garden Literature. 



"ib 



angling, set forth his gardening manual under 
this title : — A Booke of the Arte and Maner 
home to plant and graffe all sortes of trees, 
hmve to set stones, and sowe Pepines to make 
wylde trees to graffe on, as also remedies and 
medicifies. With divers other new practises, 
with an Addition in the ende of this Booke, 
of certaine Dutch practises. 

This production owes its chief value to 
the fact that it is seemingly the parent 
attempt to enlarge the still narrow enough 
experience of our native gardeners by en- 
abling them to see in print, if not in actual 
working, what was being done in the same di- 
rection abroad, and not only in France, with 
which the English had always had tolerably 
close relations, but in the Netherlands, where 
the science of horticulture was receiving 
greater attention than at any former period. 

But it does not appear that the Dutch 
ideas met at this time with much favour at 
our hands. Those who did not admire 
French models for laying out their grounds 
had recourse to the Italian ; and there were 
some who adopted a sort of compound of 






Various Schools of Gardening. 2 i 

various styles, or struck out an original pro- 
gramme for themselves, as Bacon may per- 
haps have done, if the notions broached in 
his essay Of Gardejis were carried by him 
into effect at home. 



III. 



Elizabethan Gardening — The Earliest 
Gardener's Calendar — Bacon and 

Evelyn. 




ARRISON, in his Description of 
England (1586), imputes to our 
wealth and idleness the neglect 
of many articles of food, and 

plentiful 



or loss 

even of luxury, which had been 



under the earlier Plantagenets. But he 
chronicles a great revival under the Tudors, 
and assures us that in his time not only the 
better classes, but the poor commons, had 
plenty of melons, pumpkins, gourds, cucum- 
bers, radishes, skirrets, parsneps, carrots, 
cabbages, turnips, and all kinds of salad 
herbs, as he calls them. Hops were also 
once more cultivated, he informs us, and the 
great difficulty as to poles surmounted by 



Elizabethan Gardening. 2 3 

the establishment of ashyards, whence the 
hop-growers could be supplied from season 
to season. Tusser, before Harrison's time, 
lays down regulations for the culture of the 
hop and the arrangement of hopyards ; but 
perhaps the earliest monograph on the sub- 
ject is that of Reginald Scot, who published 
his Perfect Platform of a Hop Garden in 
1574.^ It seems, from Harrison's account, 
that our gardens in Elizabeth's reign were 
beginning to wear a very improved aspect, 
not only as regarded the variety of flowers, 
trees, and herbs, but as regarded the colour 
and size of the species, which the nurserymen 
and others were then taking great pains to 
study and develop. At this period the spirit 
of adventure, which led many of our country- 
men to explore distant regions, gave a 
powerful stimulus to botanical science, and 
was of infinite service to our horticulturists 
and florists, as the vessels which had touched 

^ Lysons notes that in 1 792 about seven acres were 
employed in Barnes, Surrey, as a hopyard,— a cir- 
cumstance to be remarked, since nowhere else in the 
vicinity or county has such a crop been grown within 
memory. 



24 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

at American and West Indian ports, and in 
certain cases remained there for some time, 
brought back plants and seeds previously un- 
known, and laid the foundation of that 
passionate taste for the pursuit, which 
gradually converted the suburbs of London 
into a girdle of nurseries and market- 
grounds. 

There is one point in which the evidence 
of Harrison is to be received with allow- 
ance, and that is, where he begs us to believe 
that in very remote days the English raised 
plenty of wine, but afterwards, as in other 
matters, lost the art. Now, it is out of the 
question to suppose that at any epoch our 
climate permitted the free cultivation of the 
vine in sufficient measure to yield a vintage ; 
Orazio Busino, to whom I shall return 
presently, manifestly entertained a very in- 
different opinion of the grapes reared at such 
a place as Burleigh, when he visited it in 
1617-18; there was not sufficient sun to 
ripen the fruit in the open air ; and artificial 
mediums had scarcely come into existence, 
for Evelyn, on his visit to the Physic Gardens 



The Earliest Gardener's Calendar. 25 

at Chelsea, as comparatively late as 1685, 
was struck by the warming apparatus used 
in the conservatory there, as an interesting 
innovation. The utmost that our prede- 
cessors set themselves, as a rule, to achieve, 
was the exclusion of the cold or damp air, 
and the frost, by a very experimental pro- 
cess described in a future section. 

Richard Weston, in the GeiitlematCs Maga- 
zine for 1804, terms Evelyn's Kalendariuni 
Hortense (1664) the earliest gardener's calen- 
dar ; but such is not really the case ; for 
Bacon, in his essay Of Gardens^ has in some 
sense and measure anticipated him, and set 
forth the plants and flowers which were then 
in perfection throughout the year. Bacon 
says : " I do hold it in the royal ordering of 
gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the 
months of the year, in which severally things 
of beauty may be then in season ; " and then 
he leads us through the months, specifying 
the flora of each with an aff'ectionate minute- 
ness, which augments, if possible, our 
admiration of his versatility and grasp. He 
concludes his rehearsal thus : *' These par- 



26 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

ticulars are for the climate of London ; but 
my meaning is perceived that you may have 
ver perpetuum, as the place affords." 

The essayist speaks of the peach-tree as 
in blossom in March, but his March might 
be our April. It seems useless to copy from 
a book so common and so famous ; yet there 
are points of some importance to be re- 
corded, namely, that artificial warmth was 
now effected by means of stoves of some 
rude type to the protection in winter of 
exotics and delicate trees, and that among 
these the lemon occurs for the first time in 
company with the orange and the myrtle. 
The latter thrives in the west of England in 
the open air ; but the other two seldom 
prosper in this climate, even under a tropical 
temperature. 

Bacon places under April in his calendar, 
with the double white violet, the stock, and 
others, the tulip, which has not hitherto 
occurred. But he does not mark it as a 
novelty. I shall have more to say of 
it hereafter. It is an historical flower. 
Under February he cites the mezereon-tree 



Bacon^s Essay on Gardens. 2y 

as in blossom, and the yellow and grey 
crocus. 

Bacon's Essay is rather too elaborate and 
technical for my immediate purpose. He 
contemplates grounds laid out on an ex- 
tensive scale, and gives thirty acres as the 
area requisite for his scheme, which consists 
in a green or lawn of four acres, a heath 
or desert of six, and a main garden of twelve, 
with alleys between. Bacon preferred the 
square form, " encompassed on all the four 
sides with a stately arched hedge, the arches 
to be upon pillars of carpenter's work, of 
some ten feet high and six feet broad, and 
the spaces between of the same dimension 
with the breadth of the arch." The minute- 
ness with which this great man describes all 
the particulars, and the interest which he 
evidently felt in the subject, are very striking ; 
he found in his own grounds an agreeable 
and soothing diversion from public employ- 
ments. It is worth observing that he had 
no taste for the fantastic or grotesque. " As 
for the making of knots or figures, with 
divers-coloured earths, that they may He 



2 8 Gleaiiings in Old Garden Literature. 

under the windows of the house on that side 
which the garden stands, they be but toys : 
you may see as good sights many times in 
tarts " ; and when these lines were composed 
the fashion was running very strongly in the 
direction of these artifices, and two or three 
of the writers of the day recommended them 
as novel experiments. Nor was Bacon's con- 
demnation of them in print sufficiently influ- 
ential to suppress a taste which, in some form 
or other, has ever since prevailed. 

Bacon approved of fountains in a garden, 
but not of aviaries. His heath or desert, as 
he calls it, he wished to be " framed as much 
as may be to a natural wildness." It was to 
be a plantation, not of trees, but purely of 
undergrowth and bushes, including sweet- 
briar, honeysuckle, and the wild vine, "and 
the ground set with violets, strawberries, and 
primroses ; for these are sweet, and prosper 
in the shade." The strawberry here men- 
tioned must have been, like the vine, the 
wild sort, for the cultivated one prefers and 
requires the sun. " I like also," he goes on, 
" little heaps, in the nature of molehills 



Bacofis Essay on Gardens. 29 

(such as are in wild heaths) to be set, 
some with wild thyme, some with pinks, 
some with germander, that gives a good 
flower to the eye. ..." Some were to be 
creepers, some standards, among the latter 
of which he names roses ; and altogether 
this division was to be a kind of artificial 
wilderness, where a man might roam (for 
there were to be six acres of it), and forget 
the cares of life and statesmanship. 

While I am upon Bacon's remarks in 
reference to gardens, it may be worth while 
to note that in 1658 Ralph Austen pleaded 
, his practical experience against Bacon as a 
speculative writer for publishing observations 
on some parts of the Natural History^ where 
the other treats of flowers, fruit-trees, and 
fruit ; and the criticisms of Austen are, it 
must be owned, both sound and interest- 
ing. I perceive that, among other matters, 
he animadverts on Bacon's observations 
respecting strawberries and their preference 
for the shade, and points out that such, in 
his judgment^ was not the case. But Bacon 
probably intended the wild berry, which 



30 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

prospers without much sunshine, whereas 
his scholiast had in his mind probably a 
cultivated variety. 

Austen, when he penned these strictures on 
Bacon, was already favourably known by his 
Treatise on Fruit- Trees (4°, 1653). 

Richard Brathwaite, a contemporary of 
Bacon, makes " The Garden " a short 
section in his tract on the management of 
an earl's household. Among the vegetables 
he quotes the cucumber. But he recom- 
mends fair bowling-alleys, well-banked, as a 
desirable feature in a nobleman's pleasure- 
grounds, and he intimates that, if well kept, 
they are profitable to the gardeners — they 
received gratuities, that is to say, from 
visitors to the master. 

The name of Evelyn is customarily 
associated with his learned book on 
Forestry (1664) ; but a few years prior to 
that date he was induced by his friend 
Thomas Henshaw to put into an English 
dress a work called The French Gardener. 
The first edition was ready in 1658, and a 
third was demanded in 1675. The second I 



Evelyn! s " French Gardener^ 3 1 

have not seen ; the third has some plates by 
Hertochs, and, as I shall presently explain, 
an additional tract at the end. Evelyn, it 
seems, had met Henshaw abroad, and speaks 
of him as an old acquaintance. The French 
Gardener was regarded by the translator as 
the best extant production on the subjects 
of which it treated. In the preface he 
observes : — 

" I advertize the Reader, that what I have couched 
in four sections at the end of this Volume, under the 
name of an Appendix, is but a part of the Third 
Treatise in the Original; there remaining three Chapters 
more concerning preserving of fruits with sugar, which 
I have heretofore expressly omitted, because it is a 
mystery that I am assured by a lady (who is a person 
of quality, and curious in that art) that there is 
nothing of extraordinary amongst them, but what the 
fair sex do infinitely exceed, whenever they please to 
divertise themselves in that sweet employment." 

Beyond the mere technical interest of thi? 
volume, which time and experience have 
probably much lessened, there is a charm 
and a tone about it, which can only belong 
to a book produced by a man of letters and 
an enthusiast. At page 108 occurs " A 



32 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

Catalogue of the Names of Fruits known 
about Paris," which occupies no fewer than 
twenty-six pages. Thirty-seven varieties of 
the peach are enumerated, and many kinds 
of early and keeping apples, and plums, early 
and late, among which we still notice the 
apricot. But of pears there is an astonishing 
proportion, parcelled out among the months 
of the year, all of which have their share; 
allowance must be made for sub-varieties of 
the same species ; but the total is 3 1 5 ! One 
of those usable in September and October is 
the Pear Evelyn ; but the names are, in many 
other instances, highly curious and even 
historical. We have, for example, the Lady- 
Dear Muscat, the Ladies-Thigh, the Two- 
headed Pear, the Fine Gold of Orleans, the 
Gloiites de Gap, the Pucell of Xaintonge, the 
Father-in-Law, the Good Micat of Coyeux, 
the Younger Brother, The Maiden's Flesh, 
the Ciacciole of Rome, the Graccioli or 
Cucumber Pear, the Clown of Anjou, the 
Clown of Reatte, the Goose's Bill, Ancy (the 
English Pear), the Toad Pear, the St. Samson 
or Ditch Pear, the Sausage Pear, the Ugly 



Bacon and Evelyn. 3 3 

Good, the Great Mary of Amiens, the Grey 
Messire John, Messire John Green, the Virgin 
of Flanders, the Burnt Cat, Venus' Nipple, 
the Musk Bon-Chreden (allied to our 
Williams pear), the white Milan Pear, the 
Onionet, the Little Dagobert, the Incognito 
of Persia, the Winter Bagpipe, the Bourbon, 
and a hundred others. It is from France, no 
doubt, that we have borrowed our pears ; but 
the French, in their turn, evidently trans- 
planted from Italy, Savoy, and elsewhere 
some of those which form part of Evelyn's 
list. His catalogues of apples, plums, cherries,. 
and figs are also worth study ; but he 
admonishes us in a note that some of the 
English equivalents are not absolutely reliable, 
and that we had not attained at that time 
to " so ample a choice and universal as to 
supply the deficiency of the Dictionary." 



IV. 



The French and Dutch Schools — Evelyn 
AND THE *' French Gardener" — His 
" Sylva " — John Worlidge — Garden- 
ing IN Scotland. 




jHE second part of the Frejtch Gar- 
dener (1675) deals with a class 
of vegetable-fruits which had be- 
come in the seventeenth century common 
enough, but of which we hear very little in 
more ancient records — melons, cucumbers, 
gourds ; and a section is devoted to the 
artichoke and asparagus. Of melons and 
gourds I trace no cognisance in the technical 
treatises of the time ; but they are recited, 
with leeks, onions, and garlic, in Newbery's 
Dives Pragmaticus (1563). 

Vast progress had r^ow been made in the 
development of the kitchen-garden and in 



The French and Dutch Schools. 3 5 

the science of sub-division, by which forest- 
trees, fruit-trees, herbs, flowers, and vegetables 
were no longer grown side by side, as it 
were ; and the cultivation of the delicate 
plants introduced from milder climates ne- 
cessitated systematic precautions for screen- 
ing them from the weather. The directions 
for rearing and protecting the melon, which 
is emphatically termed ' ' the most precious 
fruit that your kitchen-garden affords," are 
very elaborate indeed. They seem to have 
enclosed the ground selected within a palisade 
of reeds to exclude the wind, and to have 
dressed the soil freely with horse-dung ; and 
new sorts were occasionally received from 
abroad. Only a few days before his trial, 
Charles I. is said to have ordered some 
Spanish melons to be planted in his garden 
at Wimbledon, then still a royal possession 
and residence. 

In the last century, the fruit had probably 
attained as great a perfection as possible. 
A curious note accompanies a copy of Foote's 
Dramatic Works (1762), to the effect that it 
was Foote who taught the owner's father to 



2)6 Gleanings hi Old Garden Literature. 

eat melon with a spoon — "So far as the 
spoon will cut, it is ripe." We continue to 
grow this fine fruit under glass ; but in the 
south they flourish like cabbages, or like the 
small Indian cucumber, in the open air. 

In his early and curious tract on Brewing, 
published at Frankfort in 1585, Thaddeus 
Hagecius speaks of the melon as a species 
of cucumber: ''Hie obiter notandum," he 
writes, *' quod etiam, quae frigida sunt, dulcia 
sunt : sicut etia sunt Cucumerum genera, 
quae Melones vulgo vocantur." But Hagecius 
(or Haycke) may almost be taken to mean 
rather the pumpkin, or some other species of 
gourd. 

Oddly enough, the culture of the artichoke 
and of asparagus is treated as if it had been 
considered a matter of equal delicacy and 
gravity ; but we look on asparagus as not 
less difficult to handle with the experience of 
two or three centuries than it was in Evelyn's 
day, while both sorts of the artichoke will 
succeed with very little care in ground of 
tolerable quality. 

The grand and inalienable institution of 



Evelyn and the ^^ French Gardener^ 3 7 

JAM, as an ingredient in our culinary economy, 
does not date much further back than the 
middle of the seventeenth century, when the 
French Garde?ier was adapted by Evelyn to 
English readers. The third part of this work, 
in the original, is occupied by directions for 
preserving, candying, and pickling fruits ; and 
in the English version this is digested and 
abridged in four sections, accompanied by an 
engraving, in which we are admitted to the 
interior of a chamber, where women are en- 
gaged in the various processes. 

Evelyn produced in 1664 his tripartite 
volume, containing the Sylva or Discourse of 
Forest Trees ; Pouiona, or An Appendix con- 
cerniftg Fruit-Trees, in relation to Cider ; and 
the Kalendarium Hortense, or Gardener's 
Alfnanac, Directing what he is to do monthly 
throughout the year. The first division com- 
prises many plants, such as jessamine, laurel, 
and holly, which rather belong to the flower- 
garden or shrubbery. But it is a piece of 
work to be taken as it is found, for it was 
really the earliest effort to draw attention, not 
merely to the various kinds of trees in our 



38 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

plantations and woods, but to the proper 
mode of propagating and pruning them, and 
of course the writer introduces anecdotes 
and touches which impart a zest and price 
to the volume. He could hardly go into 
print without telling us something new and 
useful j and I must particularly commend to 
attention the account of ancient and cele- 
brated trees, contributed to his pages by 
the Auditor of his friend, Henry Howard of 
Norfolk. 

The Kalendarium Hortense, which (after 
Bacon's essay) was the precursor of all other 
experiments of the same nature, proved more 
popular and saleable than the Sylva itself, 
and passed through several editions. To the 
ninth he added a sort of supplementary 
or companion volume, called Acetaria, a 
Discourse of Sallets, in which he included 
many articles which are no longer thought 
to fall within that category, such as spinach, 
asparagus, melons, dandelion, hops, and a 
number more. It was to some of the later 
impressions of the Calendar that Cowley ap- 
pended his poem of the Garden, with a 



John Worlidge. 39 

preface which opens with these words : — 

" I never had any other desire so strong, and so like 
to Covetousness, as that one which I have had always, 
that I might be master at last of a small house and 
large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined 
to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to 
the Culture of them and study of Nature." 

Besides the contributions which he left 
behind him to botanical literature, Evelyn 
has made his Diary and even his corre- 
spondence a small storehouse of curious facts 
in relation to the same subject ; he has not 
failed to record for us particulars of all 
the public and private gardens which came 
under his observation, either at home or 
abroad ; and there can be little doubt that 
he was instrumental, both directly and in- 
directly, in naturalising among us numerous 
beautiful examples of the flora and sylva of 
other countries, and enabled such a book as 
Worlidge's Systema Horticultures to aspire 
to far greater completeness than it could 
otherwise have attained. The benefits of 
this thrice-happy possessor of noble tastes, 
ample means, and influential friends survive 



X 



40 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter atttre, 

the triumphs of the politician and the 
soldier. 

I would particularly solicit the attention of 
the reader to Evelyn's letter to the Earl of 
Sandwich, of August 21st, 1668, in which he 
exhibits his enthusiasm for the study no less 
than his mastery of the details. It is to be 
recollected that at this time there was a 
method of transporting plants and roots from 
distant places in barrels. 

Nor can I forbear to put on paper my 
pleasurable feeling about Evelyn and Pepys, 
that they seem, both of them alike, to form 
an inseparable part of the period to which 
they belonged. You cannot touch any point 
appertaining to the social and domestic 
affairs of the second half of the seventeenth 
century, without finding yourself in contact 
somehow with them ; and they are names 
which do not pall by repetition. 

The Sy sterna HorticuUitrcB of John Wor- 
lidge (1677) was apparently the earliest 
manual for the guidance of those forming and 
cultivating gardens, and it deals methodically 
and seriatim with the treatment and virtue of 



John Worlidge. 41 

different soils ; the form of the ground, of 
which he furnishes two schemes, both cal- 
culated for a more extensive plot or area than 
the majority could command ; the structure 
and material of walls, fences, and other 
enclosures ; the erection of arbours and 
summer-houses, garden seats and benches, 
among which he enumerates some within 
niches of the wall, protected by a cupola 
supported on columns — a fashion not yet 
extinct ; the means of irrigation ; fountains 
and grottoes, statues, obelisks and dials ; and 
then he proceeds to discuss the main subject 
— the contents of a garden, and how to choose 
and manage them. There are some excel- 
lent directions and information on certain 
heads ; but the book is scarcely what I 
should designate a comprehensive treatise. 
It reappeared with some additions in 1683. 

Nor is Worlidge very systematic in his 
Systema, for he intermingles in his text plants, 
herbs, and forest-trees in an admirable con- 
fusion. The same page describes the ever- 
green oak, the tree stone-crop, the arbutus, 
and the rosemary. Yet it is a book which, 



42 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

as Charles Lamb would have put it, we would 
much rather not not have; for it is replete 
with instruction and interest. The author 
was one of those men who wrote from a 
love of the subject, begetting practical ex- 
perience and insight. We shall never know 
how much we owe in the waxing taste about 
this time for such studies to the example and 
stimulus of Evelyn. 

The Scots' Gardener, by John Reid (1683), 
is the parent-production in this class of litera- 
ture, and purports to have been compiled by 
a practical observer with a special view to 
the climate of Scotland. It is divided into 
two portions, of which the first is occupied 
by technical instructions for the choice of a 
site for the garden, the arrangement of the 
beds and walks, and other particulars, all 
tending to shew that the author had in his 
eye exclusively the richer class of patrons, 
who could afford to carry out operations on 
an ambitious and costly scale. The book 
concludes with a calendar. 

Reid furnishes very explicit rules for graft- 
ing, pruning, and propagating by seed, cutting, 



Gardening in Scotland. 43 

and sucker ; but he does not say so much as 
one might have expected about the berry 
tribe, which has always been regarded as 
thriving northward better than in England. 
He enumerates among standards apples, 
pearS; cherries, gooseberries, currants, bar- 
berries, quinces, walnuts, chestnuts, filberts, 
and service-nuts. For the wall he recom- 
mends apricots, peaches, nectarines, almonds, 
the vine, figs, currants, apples, pears, cherries, 
plums, etc. ; but, he says, "you need not take 
up much with almond, vine, fig, nor necta- 
rine." Probably there was not sun enough 
to ripen them. The book altogether con- 
tains a fair amount of curious information, 
serviceable for comparison ; but the method, 
as in all these early treatises, is faulty and 
confused. He has much to say on the sub- 
ject of pruning, and commences by observ- 
ing : — " Some Ignorants are against pruning, 
suffering their trees to run and ramble to such 
a head of confusion, as neither bears well 
nor fair." 

Reid's book did not acquire much popu- 
larity; but it was reprinted in 1721 and 1766. 



44 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter atvLve. 

The approximation to Holland through 
the House of Orange, culminating i\i the 
great political changes of 1688,^ affected 
every department of horticulture, and intro- 
duced the Dutch school, as it is still to be 
seen in a few old-fashioned places, where a 
corner is kept as a specimen of former ways 
of thought, as bygone as a monastic ruin 
among new buildings. 

This dynastic agency enriched our gar- 
dens and conservatories with many rare 
and beautiful species of flowers and bulbs, 
and perhaps assisted in inoculating the 
English collectors with the tulip-mania. 

Yet, while that bulb was carried to un- 
precedented perfection in the Low Countries, 
it had been a familiar object in English 
gardens since the time of Elizabeth at 
least; but when Bacon wrote, the culti- 
vators of it either here or abroad had not 
succeeded in procuring that wide variety of 

* Dr. Walter Harris, physician to William III., 
when he was Prince of Orange, printed, in 1699, an 
account of His Britannic Majesty's palace and gardens 
at Loo, with a plan of the grounds. It is a quarto 
tract of considerable rarity. 



Gardening in Scotland. 45 

hues which brought the flower into such 
increased celebrity. 

At the same time, it is due to the Dutch 
to say that, at all events in the first quarter 
of the seventeenth century, considerable 
progress had been made among them in the 
propagation both of the tulip and hyacinth ; 
and in 1615 Crispin de Passe the younger 
published at Utrecht his Hortus Floridus, 
with an English descriptive letterpress, seem- 
ing to shew that at that early date the in- 
terest in these bulbs had increased with 
ourselves. The engravings to the work 
above-cited exhibit numerous species of the 
tulip and other flowers of the same family 
or growth, and in the copy which is in the 
British Museum they are presented in their 
natural colours. 

At a somewhat later period, namely in 
1630, Crispin de Passe published at London 
his Book of Beasts, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, 
etc., of which there is a copy in the Museum. 
The chief part of works of this class there are 
from the benefaction of Sir Joseph Banks. 



V. 




Herbals, Physic-Gardens, and Bees. 

HE most ancient printed Herbals in 
our language are translations from 
the French and Latin, and are not 
anterior to the time of Henry VHI. The 
Great Herbal^ an English version of a 
French work, appeared in 1516, and was 
reprinted in 1526, 1529, 1539, and 1561. 
The Little Herbal^ taken from the Latin, was 
published in 1525, and had a second edition 
in 1526. Besides these two guides to a 
knowledge of the subject, we had only a 
translation of the small herbal of Macer, of 
which two editions appeared about the middle 
of the sixteenth century from the press of 
Robert Wyer, and the earlier contributions to 
a branch of letters and science which he was 
to make his own, of William Turner, who 



Herbals, Physic-Gardens^ and Bees. 47 

printed in 1538 his Libellus de Re Herbaria^ 
and in 1549 A List of the Names of Herbs, 
with their common designations. Turner's 
Herbal was partly given to the world in 
1 55 1, but was not completed till 1568, when 
the author republished it with a remarkable 
preface addressed to Queen Elizabeth, in 
which he exposes and laments the ignorance 
of the apothecaries of those days. This pre- 
liminary matter, for its curiosity and per- 
manent interest, the present writer included 
in his volume oi Prefaces (1874). 

Turner's example encouraged, perhaps, 
Henry Lyte, of Lytescary, in Somersetshire, 
to undertake a translation of the Herbal of 
Rembert Dodoens, which came out in 1578, 
and was reprinted in 1581 and 16 19. 

But while the printed literature of the 
country is comparatively late and barren, 
there were of course innumerable MSS. 
treatises on the subject in circulation from 
the Saxon era downwards, chiefly in the 
form of catalogues and glossaries, such as 
still exist in the Harleian and other public 
collections, and which were prepared some- 



48 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

times for professional and sometimes for 
scholastic purposes. Many of these are 
incidental or fragmentary; but they tend to 
impress one with a somewhat more favour- 
able notion of the conversance with such 
matters than Turner entertained ; and, by the 
way, the same may be said of the general 
knowledge of medicine which, let us recol- 
lect, has not even yet quite lost its old 
empirical taint. 

The early English apothecary laboured 
under the disadvantage of a very defective 
training, and of the absence of adequate 
literary lights and helps. The education 
which he received was necessarily of the 
most rudimentary character, and the old 
Latin and French companions to the Phar- 
macopoeia were a tissue of ignorance and 
absurdity. It was only by such men as 
Turner, who thought and worked for them- 
selves, and broke away from the trammels of 
prejudice and usage, that the medical art was 
gradually enfranchised and advanced. 

In the reign of James I., and perhaps 
even earlier, Edward Lord Zouch, of whom 



Herbals, Physic- Gardens, and Bees. 49 

there is an interesting account in Kennet's 
Parochial Antiquities, under " Chilton," had 
a physic-garden attached to his seat at 
Hackney, the earliest thing of the kind in 
England, though of long standing in Italy 
and elsewhere on the Continent. It was 
under the superintendence of Matthew de 
rObel, an apothecary, who wrote one of the 
earliest books on tobacco.^ 

Lord Zouch, whose other residence at 
Bramshill, in Hampshire (of which there is 
a view in Nash's Mansions of the Olden 
Time), is commemorated by Browne in the 
dedication of his Shepherd's Pipe (16 14) to 
that nobleman, had also ornamental and 
fruit gardens at his place near London ; and 
Sir Hugh Piatt, in his Garden of Eden 
(1653), quoted by Lysons, states that he 
removed apple and damson trees of thirty 
years' growth with success. 

The second institution of this kind was 



' In the Antiquary for February, 1885, I have 
drawn attention to the physic-garden founded at 
Venice in 1 334 by the surgeon Gualtieri, the most 
ancient in Europe. 



50 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

established at Oxford by James, Earl of 
Derby, in the reign of Charles I. Cata- 
logues of the plants were published — of the 
Medical Garden in 1648, and of the botanical 
collection in 1658, the latter under the care 
of Philip Stephens, M.D., and William 
Browne, A.M. 

Evelyn was here in 1654. " 12th July. 
Hence [from Magdalen] to the Physic-Gar- 
den, where the sensitive plant was showed 
us for a great wonder. There grow canes, 
olive-trees, rhubarb, but no extraordinary 
curiosities. ..." He paid a second visit 
ten years later, when he saw the locust-tree 
and the plane. 

The physic-garden at Chelsea dates only 
from the year 1673, when it was first rented 
by the Apothecaries' Company, and the 
ground laid out. It became their freehold 
in 172 1 by the gift of Sir Hans Sloane, lord 
of the manor. The two cedars on the south 
side of the garden were planted in 1683, 
being then about three feet high. In August, 
1793, the girth of the larger at 3 feet from 
the ground was found to be 12 feet ii| 



Herhals^ Physic-Gardens^ and Bees. 5 i 

inches, that of the smaller 12 feet and 
\ inch. 

The visit of Evelyn to the garden at 
Chelsea was paid on the 7th August, 1685. 

** I went," he notes, *' to see Mr. Watts, keeper of 
the apothecaries' garden of simples, at Chelsea, where 
there is a collection of innumerable rarities of that 
sort, particularly, besides many rare annuals, the tree 
bearing Jesuits' bark, which had done such wonders 
in quartan-agues. What was very ingenious was the 
subterranean heat, conveyed by a stove under the 
conservatory, all vaulted with brick, so as he has 
the doors and windows open in the hardest frosts, 
excluding only the snow." 

This account bespeaks a condition of 
affairs which was not at all likely to be 
attended by a successful issue. 

Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell, of whom the former 
wrote a work on Agriculture, and the latter 
a once popular and celebrated Herbal, lived 
opposite the physic-garden, while the lady was 
engaged in her work. It consisted of two 
folio volumes, and appeared in 1737. The 
preparation of such a stupendous production 
must have entailed very heavy labour and 



52 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

there must have been some good in it ; but 
it dealt with a progressive science, and very 
much of the paper on which it was made 
visible to the public has long " suffered a 
change." 

Besides the physic-gardens at Chelsea and 
elsewhere, considerable acreage has, from the 
middle of the last century, been dedicated at 
Mitcham, in Surrey, to the cultivation of 
medicinal herbs and plants, especially pepper- 
mint, lavender, liquorice, aniseed, camomile, 
and rhubarb. The peppermint, however, is 
used in the preparation of a species of dram, 
and in the time of Lysons (1792) one hundred 
acres were given up to the growth of this plant 
alone, for the purpose of distillation as well as 
for the use of the apothecary. 

The somewhat extended notice of herbals 
in these pages, as well as the list of others, 
which will be presently given, will require an 
explanation only, I think, from such as are 
not aware that this description of book em- 
braces a wider category than the mere title 
seems to import, and cannot well be neglected 
by floricultural inquirers. 



HerbalSy Physic- Gardens, and Bees. 53 

It is particularly to be predicated, if I do 
not err, of William Turner, that he was the 
first, in his little book published in 1549, to 
give the vulgar names of herbs and plants, 
as well as their scientific denominations. 

Our remote forerunners, long before the 
Conquest, made mead or metheglin from 
the honey of wild bees ; and this product 
was at the same time, in the absence of 
any other sweetening medium, the only 
substitute for sugar. Bee-culture, therefore, 
acquired by degrees considerable importance 
and development, and there were persons 
who reared them specially, and owned what 
might be termed bee-farms, with hinds to 
attend to the hives. 

An account of the principal works on bees 
will be furnished hereafter. 



VI. 

The Kitchen - Garden — Alexander 
Neckam and Johannes de Garlandia 
— The Gardens at Sheen, Greenwich, 
and Somerset House — Sir William 
Temple's Garden at Sheen — Kew 
Gardens — Gardens in and about 
London in 1691 — Early Catalogues 
of Plants — The Duke of Bedford's 
Botanical Publications. 




HE kitchen-garden is supposed by 
Wright to have preceded the 
flower-garden ; he imagines the 
flowers, among the Anglo-Saxons, to have 
been planted in enclosed spaces or beds 
near the house. The orchard, which we 
now identify with fruit-trees, had its origin in 
wyrt or ort geard, the garden for wyrtan, a 
term generally employed to signify any sort of 



TJie Kitchen-Garden. 55 

vegetable or herb. In ort one recognises the 
Latin hortiis ; but the Romans gave to the 
locaHty the name which our ancestors bestowed 
on the produce. Our word garden^ which 
used to be understood of a series of en- 
closures and plantations for various purposes, 
as the apple-yard, the ash-yard (where the 
ash for hop-poles was grown), the ort-yard, 
and the vine-yard, looks like the plural of 
geard ; and this notion is confirmed by the 
northern form garth, and apple-garth for 
apple-yard.^ The French j'ardm is evidently 
from the same root. In the Privy Purse 
Expenses of Henry VII., under 1493, we come 
across the term coney-garth, which seems to 
be a place for keeping rabbits, rather than, as 
the editor explains, a rabbit-warren, particu- 
larly as the charge is for a co?iey-garth pale. 
The leek was universally cultivated, and 



* Mr. Lucas, in his Studies in Nidderland, devotes 
a section to an etymological essay on Garth and its 
allied meanings in sundry northern languages. 

But he does not note the application of the plural to 
form a collective phrase. Yard and garth are abso- 
lutely the same word ; and Mr. Lucas specifies many 
other variations in other dialects. 



56 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature 

was not peculiar to Wales ; it was the 
favourite table vegetable, and the onion 
[ynne-leac = inula of Johannes de Garlandia) 
and garlic [gar-leac, perhaps the Latin 
gerum) were so designated, because they 
were taken to be varieties of it. Many 
kinds of flowers, which form at present 
part of the ornamental enclosure, were 
considered to belong more properly to 
the kitchen department: the sunflower, the 
violet, the marigold, the gillyflower, the 
honeysuckle, the perriwinkle, the peony, 
and the bay-tree ; in addition to which the 
Saxon had his apple-yard or garth, where 
he grew the trees to make what he called 
apple- wine — our cyder. Wright has pointed 
out that the trees and plants which were 
known to the Saxons, are, as a rule, dis- 
tinguishable from those which were subse- 
quently imported by the Normans and others 
by the names, as in the case of the pear, 
the cherry, the pea, the turnip, the radish, 
the cole wort, the cabbage, and many herbs, 
as parsley, mint, rue, and sage. 

The picture which Alexander Neckam 



Alexander Neckam. 57 

draws of a garden in the latter half of the 
twelfth century corroborates the opinion that 
that institution at the outset corresponded to 
our kitchen-garden ; but his description was 
taken from some princely or baronial establish- 
ment, and bespeaks a certain share of taste in 
arranging the herbs, plants, and fruit-trees. 
His narrative, although it is of no service as a 
guide to the resources of the humbler classes 
in this respect, is very precious, from its early 
date and the superior intelligence of the 
writer, as a kind of clue to what was then in 
cultivation and use ; and, in addition to what 
I have enumerated from other sources, he 
recites fennel, savory, cresses, melons, the 
cucumber, the poppy, anise, mustard, white 
pepper, wormwood, peaches, pears of St. 
Regie, citrons or lemons, pearmains, oranges 
(Mala atcrea), almonds, dates, and figs. How 
some of these were reared, he omits to 
explain ; he characterises them as features 
only in a noble garden, it is true ; but artificial 
warmth was not available, and in the open 
air the almond would scarcely bear, and the 
date and the orange would not live. 



5 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

The orange, which forms, as we perceive, 
part of Neckam's twelfth century hst, soon 
became a favourite, and was a comparatively 
cheap fruit in this country. It appears from 
one of the Household Books that in 1480 
ten were to be had for a silver penny ; but 
in 1290 some had come over from Spain, and 
were purchased for the Queen of Edward I., 
Eleanor of Castile. They are described in 
the record as PomcE de Ora?ige ; and they 
are associated with a variety of other fruit, 
so that there is little doubt that the Seville 
orange, imported thither from Arabia, is 
meant, more especially as the Spanish 
parentage and tastes of Eleanor were calcu- 
lated to favour the importation of the pro- 
duce of her native land. Yet Sir Antonio 
More painted Sir Thomas Gresham with an 
orange in his hand, as the introducer of it 
into England. He was no more entitled to 
that distinction than the Flamborough family 
mentioned in the Vicar of Wakefield. 

The account of Johannes de Garlandia 
(an English resident in France) of his own 
garden at Paris is not very dissimilar from 



Johannes de Garlandia. 59 

Neckam's. As the relations between the two 
countries became closer and more regular, 
the French improvements in horticulture and 
additions to the flora were not long in find- 
ing their way across the Channel. 

This worthy writer divides his grounds into 
garden, shrubbery, wood, and grove ; so that, 
as he was in the middle class of life, land 
must have been cheap at that time, and 
space of no moment. He mentions his 
gardener {ortola?iiis), and tells us what the 
latter cultivated in the way of kitchen herbs. 
We learn that Magister Johannes grew not 
only his own onions and cabbages, but his 
own mustard. But the cardinal aim of 
Master John was to render his strings of 
names as long as possible, and he mixes 
up fruit-trees and forest-trees, shrubs and 
creepers, in a way which one can scarcely 
suppose to be true to reality. In his wood 
{nemiis) he informs us that he had the 
celsus bearing celsa^ which his editor ex- 
plains to be midberries. Such, however, 
is not likely to have been the case. As I 
have hinted, the author's aim was lexico- 



6o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



"e. 



graphical primarily, and Mr. Wright himself 
points out that in one place he enumerates 
among the birds which the fowler captures 
in the wood, not only the eagle, which is 
improbable enough, but the phoenix ! 

His twelfth-century labour is very instruc- 
tive on many accounts ; but immediately it 
transports us across seven centuries of spent 
life into the remarkably comfortable quarters 
at Paris of a very remote predecessor of Dr. 
Johnson in the art of dictionary-making. 

The earlier portion of the Diary of Evelyn 
may be consulted with advantage for a view 
of the public and royal gardens, and private 
pleasure-grounds, seen by him during his 
continental tour. 

Of our own country the development in 
the same respect was to some extent retarded 
by the climate and the absence of native 
talent for the purpose ; and information on 
the state of ancient gardens, public and pri- 
vate, is at first very scanty. Even Bacon, 
though himself a gardener, does not allude 
to this part of the matter in his Life of LLenry 
the Seventh. 



The Gardens at Sheen^ etc. 6i 

The Privy Purse Expenses of that prince 
appear to contain only two direct references 
to the king's garden at Sheen, the venerable 
riverside manor-house, out of which gradually 
developed itself the palace of our Tudor 
princes. One is under February 17th, 
1497-8, and is a grant of £^2 to the gardener 
for grafts. The second is of the 26th January, 
1498-9, and registers a payment of loi". for 
" sope hashes," or the lees of soap, which were 
found useful in killing slugs and other vermin. 

In the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry 
VIII., under 1530, there is an item for 
"weeding, delving, and ordering the royal 
garden at Greenwich," and the amount, 
jQi 4J-. 6^., must have been for a considerable 
period. At the same time the price of herbs 
might appear to have been high, as twenty 
shillings were paid to the bringer of some 
to the king; but the amount was given in 
largess rather than as the commercial value 
of the articles, in the same way as Henry 
ordered 33'. Zd. to some countryfolk who had 
presented him with wild strawberries, and as 
elsewhere we meet with a record of a potde 



62 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



'a 



of the same fruit realizing \od. to the seller. 
These are early material for any future his- 
tory of the "Origin of Tips." According to 
some of the entries under 1531, it seems as 
if the gardening charges at Greenwich were 
paid quarterly, for a man named Walsh re- 
ceived £,\ ^s. 6d. for trimming the garden 
there at the end of November in that year ; 
and this, like some of the other payments, 
may have been in advance for Christmas. 

In my edition of Randolph's FoejTis, with a 
view to rendering it more complete, rather 
than from any hope of making it more 
acceptable to the drawing-room table, I in- 
serted from a MS. in the British Museum 
some verses " On a Maid seen by a Scholar 
in Somerset House Garden." This must 
have been before 1635, the date of the 
writer's decease ; and it seems to shew that 
the indifferent reputation of the mansion was 
shared by the grounds. Probably, when 
Queen Henrietta Maria resided there, a little 
more decorum was observed ; but even this 
is questionable. The garden of the old 
palace was far more extensive than the 



The Gardeyis at Sheen ^ etc. 63 

present aspect of the site would lead one to 
suppose, for the Protector Somerset cleared 
a large area before he erected his residence 
here, partly to obtain with greater facility 
from the demolished buildings the material 
for his own. This was in 1549. Part of the 
clearance consisted of the old inn of Chancery, 
called Strand Inn. 

The scholar in these lines was doubtless 
Randolph himself. He speaks of the place 
as the haunt of glittering courtiers. It was 
one of the splendid inns, as they were called, 
along the south side of the Strand, and the 
grandest, perhaps, of all. Is it changed for 
the better or the worse ? Since the last 
century the river front has suffered much 
alteration. 

I would add that Mr. Wheatley, in the 
chapter on Hyde Park printed with his 
Round About Piccadilly (1870), has collected 
some very interesting information concerning 
that park itself and Kensington Gardens, and 
the Green and St. James's Parks are treated 
in the next section. 

The same writer has pointed out the 



64 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

papers on the subject of horticulture in the 
seventh and twelfth volumes of Archceologia. 
To the latter I shall have to recur ere long. 

The reader of Macaulay's essays will call 
to mind his account of Sir William Temple 
and the delight which the latter took in his 
garden at Sheen. This was the site of the 
ancient priory, and here, during many years, 
Temple amused his leisure in horticultural 
experiments, and had for his amanuensis no 
less a person than Jonathan Swift. Lysons 
says : — 

** King William, who had known Sir William 
Temple on the Continent, and had a great esteem for 
his talents and character, frequently visited him at 
this place and pressed him to become his Secretary of 
State. When his patron was lame with the gout, 
Swift usually attended his Majesty in his walks round 
the garden. The king is said on one of these occa- 
sions to have offered to make him a captain of horse, 
and to have taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch 
manner." 

In 1667, it is to be gathered from his 
correspondence that Temple was paying 
special attention to the culture of cherries, 



Kew Gardens. 6$ 

so as to have a succession of kinds from 
May to Michaelmas, and also to the more 
successful propagation of the vine. 

Several publications have appeared in 
connection with the gardens at Kew. The 
most noticeable is the Hortus Keimnsis, first 
printed in 1763. At least, that is the earliest 
date given by Watt in his Bibliotheca. But 
of course the immense development which 
these fine public gardens have experienced 
under the Hookers, renders such descriptions 
imperfect and obsolete. Nor is there any 
special account at present procurable of 
the kindred establishments at Chiswick 
and Regent's Park. 

In an essay dedicated to the literary 
rather than to the technical aspect of the 
present subject, the labours of such men as 
Gibson, Kent, and Capability Brown can 
hardly be treated sufficiently at large to do 
justice to them or the theme itself. Gibson 
enters into my plan so far that he wrote an 
account of the gardens near London in 1691 
first printed in the twelfth volume of Archceo- 
logia. 



66 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

There is no doubt that the successive 
exertions of Evelyn and Pope, brought to 
bear on their noble and powerful friends, 
were instrumental in achieving many valuable 
improvements, by encouraging, on the one 
hand, the taste, and, on the other, the genius 
for landscape-gardening. It would be im- 
possible, I conceive, to name two Englishmen 
who respectively exercised so healthy and im- 
portant an influence for good in this direction 
as the authors of Sylva and Windsor Forest. 

In Gibson's sketch of the principal 
gardens, public and private, near London, 
in 169 1, there is a considerable degree of 
interest. He includes some of the nursery- 
men. Subjoined is a list of the names which 
he furnishes : — 

Hampton Court. 

Kensington Gardens. 

The Queen Dowager's Garden at Hammersmith. 

Beddington Garden, leased to the Duke of Norfolk. 

Chelsea Physic-Garden. 

My Lord Ranelagh's Garden. 

Arlington Garden, in the possession of my Lord of 

Devonshire. 
My Lord Fauconberg's Garden. 



Gardens in and about Lotidon in 1 69 1 . 6^ 

Sir William Temple's, at Sheen. 

Sir Henry Capel's Garden at Kew. 

Sir Stephen Fox's Garden at Chiswick. 

Sir Thomas Cook's Garden at Hackney. 

Sir Josiah Child's Plantation of walnut, etc., at 

Wanstead. 
Sir Robert Clayton's Plantation, at Marden, in 

Surrey. 
The Archbishop of Canterbury's Garden at Lambeth. 
Dr. Uvedale's Garden at Enfield. 
Dr. Tillotson's Garden near Enfield [? Ilford]. 
Brompton Park Gardens. 
Mr. Raynton's Garden at Enfield. 
Mr. Richardson's Garden at East Barnet. 
Captain Foster's Garden at Lambeth. 
Mr. Anthony Vesprit's Garden. 
Ricketts, \ 

Darby, \ Nurseries at Hoxton. 
Pearson, ) 

Mr. Evelyn's Garden at Deptford. 
Mr. Webb's Garden near Enfield. 
Clement's Nursery at Mile End. 

Gibson does not speak very highly of 
Evelyn's grounds or greenhouse. He de- 
scribes in enthusiastic terms the Orangery at 
Beddington, near Croydon, the seat of the 
Carews, but then let to the Duke of Norfolk. 
He says it was two hundred feet long, and 



68 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

the trees thirteen feet high, and growing, not 
in pots, but out of the ground. They yielded 
in the season when Gibson wrote ten thousand 
oranges.^ 

I have stated that the old grammarian, 
Johannes de Garlandia, has furnished us 
with a most interesting and precious account 
of the contents of his garden at Paris, simply 
by way of philological illustration. This was 
in the closing years of the thirteenth century. 
In our own country we have nothing of the 
kind so early; but in 1596 and 1599 John 
Gerarde printed a catalogue of the trees and 
plants growing in his grounds in Holborn. 
The latter is a small, thin folio volume, and 
has been lately republished in facsimile. 

At a later period these descriptive lists 
became common ; but our literature does 
not possess many of them till we come 
down to comparatively recent times. 

Gerarde's was the prototype. He styles 
himself on the title-page, " Surgeon and 
Citizen of London." 

' See further particulars in the Appendix^ where 
Gibson's tract is republished entire. 



Duke of Bedford's Publications. 6g 

John Russell, Duke of Bedford (1802-39) 
did good service in his time toward the pro- 
motion of objects connected with horticulture, 
and by publishing the results of experiments 
made on his estate and accounts of his 
botanical collections. These works, of which 
the first-quoted passed through as many 
as four editions between 18 16 and 1828, 
were : — 

1. Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis. With numer- 
ous dried specimens of Agricultural Grasses cultivated 
by the Duke of Bedford. Folio, 1816 ; royal 8vo, 
1824, 1855, 1858. The first edition contains dried 
specimens of the grasses, the others lithographic 
plates. The editor was Mr. George Sinclair. 

This was followed by : — 

2. Hortus EricccEtts Woburnensis. A catalogue of 
Heaths in the collection of the Duke of Bedford at 
Woburn Abbey. Alphabetically and systematically 
arranged by James Forbes. 4to, 1815. With nlates, 
coloured. " ""*^ 

3. Salicefum Woburnense ; or, A Catalogue of 
Willows, Indigenous and Foreign, in the collection of 
the Duke of Bedford. Systematically arranged by 
James Forbes. 4to, 1829. With coloured plates. 



70 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

4. Hortus Wohurnefisis. A Descriptive Catalogue 
of upwards of Six Thousand Ornamental Plants, 
cultivated at Woburn Abbey. With numerous 
Illustrated Plans for the Erection of Forcing 
Houses, Green Houses, and an account of the 
management throughout the year. By James Forbes. 
8vo, 1833. With plates, which in the large-paper 
copies were coloured. 

5. Pinetum Woburnense : or, A Catalogue of Conifer- 
ous Plants in the collection of the Duke of Bedford at 
Woburn Abbey. Systematically arranged by James 
Forbes. Imperial 8vo, 1839. With plates. 



A series such as I have described must 
have proved of very great service to the cause 
of tree and flower- culture. The design of the 
work on grasses was to communicate to those 
interested in the subject the results of tests 
made in the production and nutritive value 
of different species of gramineous plants used 
as food by domestic animals. The volume, 
illustrated with a hortiis siccus of specimens 
which had been actually employed, contains 
remarks on their natural habits, and points 
out the soils best adapted for them, the 
kinds most profitable for growth in various 



Duke of BedforcTs Publications. 7 1 

sorts of ground, permanent pastures, irri- 
gated meadows, dry or upland pasture, and 
the alternate system.* 

* See " A Letter addressed to Dawson Turner, Esq., 
on the Death of the Duke of Bedford, particularly in 
reference to his Services to Botany and Horticulture." 
By Sir W. J. Hooker. Privately printed, 1840, 
imperial 8vo. 



VII. 




The Ancient and Modern Arbour — 
Grottoes — Garden Life. 

HE description of the squire's 
garden in the delightful romance 
of the Squire of Low Degree is 
worth copying, because it corroborates the 
notion as to the indiscriminate arrangement 
of early times, even allowing for the exigen- 
cies of metre : — 

" The tree it was of cypress, 
The first tree that Jesu chose : 
The sothern-wood and sycamore, 
The red rose and the lily flower : 
The box, the beech, and the laurel-tree : 
The date, also the damisl ; 
The filberts hanging to the ground : 
The fig-tree and the maple round : 
The peony, the poplar, and the plane. " 

But more noteworthy, perhaps, is the fact 



The Ancient and Modern Arbour, 73 

that our ancestors evidently drew a clear 
distinction between the garden and the 
arbour — not our modern summer-house, but 
an inner enclosure so called. This point has 
already received attention in the notes to 
Warton's Poetry. But the few lines there 
extracted from an old metrical tale may be 
worth their room here : — 

" And in the garden, as I ween, 
Was an arbour, fair and green ; 
And in the arbour was a tree, 
A fairer in the world might never be." 

The curious circumstance, after all, how- 
ever, is not that the early Englishman should 
have had an inner garden called an arbour, 
but that he should make it a receptacle for 
forest-trees, and, as we presently learn, that 
the heroine had an arbour in which her dwell- 
ing lay — a building, too, of some pretension, 
according to the story. Therefore, whereas 
now the arbour forms part of the garden, it 
anciently seems to have been the ornamental 
ground which surrounded the house, and if 
it be derived from herba^ it was perhaps in 
grass, with walks interspersed. 



74 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

But we might infer from a passage in an 
early sixteenth-century poem, the Debate and 
Strife between Summer and Winter , which is, 
however, little more than a translation from 
a French piece with a similar title, that the 
arbour was coming into use in the modern 
sense of a summer-house in the time of 
Henry VIII. For Summer, in this metrical 
interlocution, says that it is better to be in 
a green arbour [herbe?'), where one may 
embrace and kiss one's mistress, than to be 
at the fire, chafing one's feet. This notice 
of the thing is fortified by the curious item 
in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII. 
under April 8th, 1503 : " For making of an 
arbour at Baynardes Castell, 5^-." — which 
certainly imports the construction of an in- 
expensive summer-house, rather than the 
more elaborate contrivance described in the 
Squire of Low Degree. 

That the arbour had in the commence- 
ment or first quarter of the sixteenth century 
acquired its actual character, I find a further 
proof, if one were needful, in the story 
which forms No. 64 of A Hundred Merry 



The Ancient and Modern Arbour. 75 

Tales (1526), where the fair young lady 
admits to her confessor to having been 
guilty of an indiscretion in a pleasant green 
arbour. 

But before Bacon's time, and even so 
early as the fifteenth century, the arbour, 
in the modern acceptation, had become 
a regular institution, and in the pleasure- 
grounds of royalty and the wealthy was 
constructed of carpenter's work, and often 
expensively decorated. It formed at once a 
pleasant retirement for members of the family 
and a convenient place for amours. 

A sort of survival of the Arbour of our 
romances appears in the garden-house of the 
early drama. The institution was at this 
time in a transitional state from what it had 
been — a villa in grounds — to what it has 
become among ourselves, a mere summer- 
house. The old garden house is stigmatised 
by Stubbes in his Anatomy of Abuses (1583) 
as a medium and theatre for intrigues and 
assignations. 

But in 1644, when A Looking-Glass of 
the World was written (as I presume) by 



76 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature, 

Colonel Mercer, something like the modern 
summer-house had come into regular vogue, 
for the author there speaks of *' seated 
arbours covered with woodbine." 

In reference to grottoes in noblemen's 
grounds, Worlidge observes : — 

*' The most famous of this kind that this kingdom 
affords, is that Wiltonian Grotto near unto Salisbury, 
on which no cost was spared to make it compleat, and 
wherein you may view, or might have lately so done, 
the best of water-works, far excelling what Rapinus 
sings of late Richlieu's palace in France." 

Mr. Wright has inserted in his volume of 
Domestic Manners and Senti77ients an en- 
graving from the romance of Alexander^ in 
which we are introduced to a garden where 
two crowned personages are playing at chess, 
and a third individual in some outer court 
is apparently engaged in making a selection 
from the plants around him. We can see 
most of him, as, although there is a palisade 
nearly as high as the gateway between us, it 
reaches very little beyond his knee, and if he 
stretched across, he might, judging from the 
very Chinese perspective, readily pick a man 



Garden Life. 77 

off the chessboard, or tap one of the kings 
on the crown with the bough in his hand. 

There is a mediaeval Latin fabHau of a 
man who invited some friends to dinner, 
and insisted on having the table spread at 
the riverside, contrary to the wish of his 
wife, who was not fond of being crossed. 
She sat with her back to the stream, and the 
more he begged her to look pleasant, the 
nearer she pushed her seat to the water, till 
at last she fell plump in. Her husband 
thereupon procured a boat, and went up 
against the tide in search of her ; and when 
, his friends remonstrated with him for rowing 
up the stream, he said that his wife was so 
opposite all her life that he was sure her 
body must have floated against the current. 
This story occurs in a mutilated form in 
Merry Tales and Quick Answers^ and again 
in PasquiVs Jests. Its value to us lies in its 
casual elucidation of old English al fresco 
hfe. 

In the romance of Sir Cleges, the hero 
kneels in prayer under a cherry-tree. 




VIII. 

Window-Gardening — Cottage Gardens 
IN 1677 — Influence of Astrology — 
Warming Apparatus — Variegation 
OF Foliage. 

jHE taste for window-gardening is of 
very remote antiquity, and even 
before the use of glass the lattice 
was embowered in foliage and flower, or 
the hardy out-of-door vine — the "vinettes 
running in the casements" of the poet 
Lydgate. Alexander Neckam, who flourished 
in the twelfth century, long before Dan 
John, makes us love the damsels of his day, 
and think that they must have had other 
gentle and pretty tastes, when, in his treatise 
Of the Nature of Things^ he tells us of their 
fondness for this innocent and sweet species 
of decoration. 



Wijtdow- Gardening. y 9 

The love and extension of window-garden- 
ing in London is illustrated by one of the 
stories in PasquiPs Jests (1604). Some 
merrymakers at a country inn, inquiring of 
the landlady after the latest news, she tells 
them of one of the greatest wonders that she 
ever saw or heard of, and it was the work of 
a stranger in London in respect to gardens 
and the preservation of flowers ; and she 
had seen it, she averred, with her own eyes ; 
and it was the new art, which this person 
taught the citizens, of taking in their gardens 
every night at their windows, and letting 
them out again in the morning. They agreed 
to go up with mine hostess to judge for 
themselves; and the tale proceeds to relate 
that, after taking her friends through Cheap- 
side, to the Exchange, Westminster, London 
Bridge, the top of St. Paul's, and the Bear 
Garden, their conductor eventually shewed 
them, in a little lane, a widow putting out of a 
garret-casement a box, in which she arranged 
pots of gillyflowers, carnations, and herbs. 
The point for us here is, of course, the casual 
indication of what was a more or less general 



8o Gleanino^s in Old Garden Literature. 



"ii 



/ 



usage in London itself, if not in other 
towns. 

This little pleasantry and hoax becomes of 
peculiar interest as an aid to our knowledge 
of this branch of the inquiry, and to a more 
accurate realisation of the appearance of the 
thoroughfares, or at least some of the minor 
arteries, of Jacobean London. 

The liking for this sort of ornament has 
of late years increased among the inhabitants 
of all crowded centres. The earliest com- 
mencement of the fashion preceded the 
present necessity for it, and the casements 
of the citizens of London were planted and 
trellised, at a time when the City itself was 
far more thinly populated and built, and all 
beyond a limited area was open and verdant. 
But the facilities for rendering the window- 
sill a receptacle for flowers scarcely existed 
until the apertures for the admission of light 
and air into dwellings were placed on a more 
or less modern footing. 

Speaking of a garden, Worlidge says, 
writing in 1677 : — 

*' Such is its pre-excellency, that there is scarce a 



Cottage Gardens in 16'j'/, 81 

cottage in most of the southern parts of England but 
hath its proportionable garden, so great a delight do 
most of men take in it, that they may not only please 
themselves with the view of the flowers, herbs, and 
trees, as they grow, but furnish themselves and their 
neighbours upon extraordinary occasions, as nuptials, 
feasts, and funerals, with the proper products of their 
gardens. " 

The cottage garden is a subject of special 
interest, inasmuch as it comes home to so 
many who have neither the space nor the 
fortune to cultivate on any ambitious scale. 
I do not suppose that it is an institution 
which can be confidently referred to a date 
much anterior to Worlidge ; and many of the 
loveHnesses of the sweet small plots which 
stand before our cottages were unknown 
even in his day. But the succeeding century 
saw most of the productions which now grace 
the cottage garden supplied from various 
sources. 

Hazlitt, recalling the scenes and memories 
of his childhood, brings up before us in one 
of his essays the Montpelier Tea Gardens, at 
Walworth, as they appeared in 1787. They 

6 



82 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

exhibited a flora analogous to that of the 
cottage ground. 

/" I see," he says, " the beds of larkspur with purple 
eyes ; tall hollyhocks, red and yellow ; the broad sun- 
flowers, caked in gold, with bees buzzing round them ; 
wildernesses of pinks and hot-glowing peonies ; 
poppies run to seed, the sugared lily, and faint 
mignonette." 

He remembered, too, the barberries, which 
he had seen in America, while he was there 
from 1783 to 1787. 

"The taste of barberries which have hung out in 
the snow during the severity of a North-American 
winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of 
thirty years ; for I have met with no other taste in all 
that time at all like it. It remains by itself, almost 
like the impression of a sixth sense." 

The early gardener restricted his culture 
to the proper periods for planting and sow- 
ing, and that was partly influenced by the 
writings of the ancients, or traditional pre- 
cepts derived from them, and partly by 
astrological laws. He was not altogether 
ignorant of professional subtleties, for it 



Influence of Astrology. 83 

appears that by grafting and other more 
occult processes, he endeavoured to modify 
the colour and flavour of fruit, and to bring 
it forward, so that, for instance, the grape 
and the cherry might be ready at the 
same time, which the mediaeval expert 
sought to accomplish by grafting a vine slip 
on a cherry stock. The use of clay in graft- 
ing was already familiar. But seeing how 
imperfectly this important branch of the 
science is at present understood, we need not 
wonder at the rudeness of its development 
in the middle ages. 

In Bacon's time tender fruit and other 
trees appear to have been protected by some 
system of stove, as he tells us in a passage 
of his Essays, already quoted ; but neither 
Evelyn nor Worlidge goes beyond a hot-bed 
constructed in the ordinary way for bottom 
heat, and screened from the weather at night, 
or during the prevalence of frost, by an arched 
canopy of thatch or matting. Worlidge 
thought that the best description of a hot- 
bed which he had yet (1677) seen was in 
Evelyn's Philosophical Discourse of Earthy 



84 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

commonly called his Terra; and he has 
transferred it to his own pages. 

Evelyn considered stoves prejudicial in 
the conservatories, however. In his letter to 
the Earl of Sandwich, August 21st, 1668, 
he observes : — 

" Stoves absolutely destroy our conservatories ; but 
if they could be lined with cork I believe it would 
better secure them from the cold and moisture of the 
walls, than either mattresses or reeds with which we 
commonly cover them." 

Beyond question, the science of construct- 
ing heating apparatus and regulating it, with 
the use of proper fuel, was in its infancy ; 
and if certain classes of coal, heavily charged 
with sulphur, were burned, or coke, no deli- 
cate vegetation could exist in the atmosphere 
so created ; and at Chelsea, according to 
Evelyn's testimony, a remedy for the smoke 
seems to have been found by keeping the 
doors and windows open ! An account of 
the subterranean contrivance and other pre- 
cautions formerly in use at the Apothecaries' 
Garden seemed to belong more fitly to the 
antecedent section, where it occurs. 



Warming Apparatus. 8 5 

Breton, in his Fantasticks (1626), tells his 
reader to beware of hot-houses in November, 
lest he should catch cold. But whether 
he intends the word in a horticultural 
sense, or in what was in his time the 
more common one of a bagnio, is not 
altogether clear. 

But there is little doubt that it was 
always the case in our country, as Breton 
states under March, that the cultivation 
of such delicate fruit as lemons, oranges, 
and pomegranates cost a good deal more 
than the result commercially justified. 

The occupations connected with horticul- 
ture multiplied as time progressed, and the 
necessities or experience of consumers deve- 
loped themselves more and more. To the 
simple gardener were gradually added the 
hoer, the engrafter or pruner, the fieldman, 
the mower, although these latter two apper- 
tain more properly to the agricultural depart- 
ment ; and where, as at present, pigs, cows, 
and poultry were kept as part of the demesne, 
they had their cowherds, swineherds, and the 
like j and, on the whole, in looking over the 



86 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



"i^ 



historical and literary evidences, one is irre- 
sistibly led to the conclusion, that the facilities 
possessed by the fifteenth-century gardener 
and husbandman, while they were of course 
vastly inferior to those in our hands, were 
neither scanty nor relatively barbarous. 

In the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth 
(fourteenth century), which is a general man- 
ual of education and demeanour, the author 
instructs his reader, as children of good 
right love to eat apples, to pare the fruit, 
take out the stalks, and plant the pips. 

In his Fantasticks (1626) Breton says, 
under March : — 

'' " The dayes begin to lengthen apace : the forward 
Gardens give many a fine Sallet ; and a nose-gay of 
violets is a present for a Lady ; the Prime- Rose is 
now in his Prime, and the Trees begin to bud, and 
the green spices (spikes) of grasse to peep out of the 
earth. Now is Nature as it were waking out of her 
sleep. 

'* It is now time, honest Country-man, to make an 
end of sowing of all sorts of small pulse. Graffe all 
sorts of fruit-trees, and with young Plants and Syens 
(scions) replenish your Nurcery. Cover the roots of 
all Trees that are bared, and with fat and pregnant 



Variegation of Foliage. 87 

Earth lay them close and warme. If any Trees grow 
barren, bore holes in the Roots, and drive pins or 
hard wedges of Oake wood therein ; and that will 
produce fruitfulnesse. Transplant all sort of Summer 
Flowers, especially the Crown imperiall, Tulips, 
Hyacinths, and Narcissus of all shapes and colours." 

He instructs us under September to make 
conserve of quince and barberry, to sow 
winter herbs, and set artichokes, rose-trees, 
apple-trees, wardens, strawberries, violets, and 
gillyflowers, to sow parsnips, and in dry 
weather to gather hops. Nor is it, says he, 
bad housewifery to make verjuice and pluck 
hemp. 

Under April, in the same work, are 
enumerated citrons, melons, cucumbers, 
artichokes, and pole-hops. That month was 
considered the proper season for setting 
all these. 

Breton gives us some good advice under 
September on the subject of windfalls : — 

"Now as touching Windfalls, or such fruit as 
falleth from the trees, and are not gathered, they must 
not be laid with the fruit that is gathered ; and of 
fallings there are two sorts, one may fall through 



8S Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

ripeness, 'and they are best, and may be kept to 
bake or roast ; the other beaten down by the wind, 
and they must be spent as fruit (not being ripe), else 
they will wither and come to nothing ; and therefore 
it is not good by any means to beat down fruit with 
poles, or to carry them in carts, loose or jogging, or 
in half filled Sacks, where they may be bruised." 

The practice of variegating the foliage of 
plants and shrubs was in the time of 
Charles II. evidently of some standing, 
for Worlidge devotes a chapter to what he 
calls " Variegated or Gilded Leafed Plants." 
He specifies the laurel, the box, the peri- 
winkle, and rosemary. But he relates an 
anecdote, which may shew that the process 
was sometimes accidentally accomplished 
without human agency : 

''Travelling," he writes, "through some part of 
Glamorganshire, and discoursing of these Variegated 
greens, one of that country assured me that in that 
country was a very large Holly with all its leaves 
curiously Gilded, growing wild in a wood, which was 
not unlikely, for from the woods they first came." 

He brings his narrative about variegation 



Variegation of Foliage. 89 

of foliage to a close with an account of an 
embroidered elder. 

" It happened about two years since (being Anno 
1 674), A Gardener near London by accident discovered 
in a hedge an Elder-tree, whose leaves seem'd to be 
embroidered by the swelling of the veins that spread 
themselves throughout the Leaf, and appearing of 
a. different colour from the rest of it ; they being of 
a curious texture made them appear to the eye most 
beautiful and rare." 



IX. 




Bacon as a Gardener. 

HAVE drawn attention in a former 
place to the warm interest mani- 
fested by this great man in his 
Essays in the subject before us. But there 
the topic was treated in an incidental and 
cursory way. In his Sylva Sylvariirn, or A 
Naturall Historic, In Ten Centuries, a posthu- 
mous publication edited by Rawley, and 
printed in 1627, he enters upon the matter 
copiously and systematically ; it occupies in 
fact the whole of the fifth and sixth, and part 
of the seventh, Century. 

Bacon, for whose immense intellectual 
grasp no point of research was too large or 
too small, is supposed to have had a hand 
in laying out the fine grounds which, before 



Bacon as a Gardener. 91 

their lamentable curtailment, adorned his own 
Inn of Court ; and doubtless the experi- 
ments in horticulture which he reports in 
the Sylva Sylvarum were made by himself 
or under his auspices and direction at 
Gorhambury. It is affecting, even at so 
long a distance of time, to contemplate the 
lifelong struggle for the mastery of universal 
knowledge in the regions of philosophy and 
science, and the indefatigable labours in- 
volved even in arriving at the results, which 
are presented to us in this volume. 

Bacon did not witness the appearance of 
' his Natural History in print, and from the 
mode in which the text is arranged, it is 
almost inferable that the editor is responsible 
for the order of the contents. For the section 
opens rather abruptly with an account of 
tests made with various sorts of manure, as 
regards their influence on crops : — 

" There were sowen in a Bed, " the author tells 
us, "Turnip-seed, Radish-seed, Wheat, Cuccumber- 
seed, and Pease. The Bed we call a Hot-bed, and 
the Manner of it is this. There was taken Horse-dung, 
old, and well-rotted. This was laid upon a Banke, 



92 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

halfe a foot high, and supported round about with 
Planks ; And upon the Top was cast Sifted Earth, some 
two Fingers deepe, and then the seed Sprinkled upon 
it, having beene steep 'd all night in Water mixed 
with Cow-dung. The Turnip-Seed, and the Wheat 
came up halfe an inch above Ground, within two 
days after, without any Watring. The Rest the third 
day. The experiment was made in October ; And (it 
may be) in the Spring the Accelerating would have 
been the speedier. This is a Noble Experiment ; For 
without this helpe this would have beene foure times 
as long in comming up. ... It may be tried also with 
Cherries, Strawberries, and other Fruit, which are 
dearest, when they come early. " 

He adds as to strawberries : — 

" Strawberries watered now and then (as once in 
three dayes) with Water, wherein hath beene steeped 
Sheepes-Dung, or Pigeon-dung, will prevent and come 
early. And it is like the same Effect would follow in 
other Berries, Hei-bes, Flowers, Graines, and Trees. 
And therefore it is an Experiment, though vulgar in 
Strawberries, yet not brought into use generally : For 
it is usuall to helpe the Ground with Mucke ; And 
likewise to recomfort it sometimes with Mucke put 
to the Roots ; But to water it with Muckewater, 
which is like to be more forcible, is not practised." 

Here we have our liquid manure fore- 



Bacon as a Gardener. 93 

shadowed. I proceed to cite another experi- 
ment with different kinds of dressing : — 

"There was Wheat, steeped in Water, mixed with 
Cow-Dung, other in Water mixed with Horse-Dung, 
other in Water mixed with Pigeon-Dung, other in 
Urine of Man, other in Water mixed with Chalke 
powdred : other in Water mixed with Soot, other in 
Water mixed with Ashes, other in Water mixed with 
Bay-salt, other in Claret wine, other in Malmsey, 
other in Spirit of wine. The proportion of the mix- 
ture was, a fourth part of the Ingredients to the others, 
save that there was of the Salt not above an eighth 
part. The Urine, and Wines, and Spirit of wine, were 
simple without mixture of water. The time of the 
steeping was twelve houres. The Time of the yeare 
'October. There was also other Wheat sowen un- 
steeped, but watered twice a Day with warme water. 
There was also other Wheat sowen simple to compare 
it with the rest. The Event was : that those that were 
in the mixture of Dung, and Urine, and Soot, Chalke, 
Ashes, and Salt, came up within six dayes : And those 
that afterwards proved the Highest, Thickest, and most 
Lustie, were : first, the Urine ; next, the Salt ; next, the 
Wheat simple of it selfe, unsteeped and unwatered ; 
next, the watered twice a day with warme water^; 
next, the Claret wine. So that these three [two] last 
were slower than the ordinary Wheat of it selfe ; and 
this Culture did rather retard than advance. As for 
those that were steeped in Malmsey and Spirit of 



94 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

Wine, they came not up at all. This is a Rich Experi- 
ment for Profit." 

In the Jewel- HoiLse of Art and Nature^ by 
Sir Hugh Piatt, 1594, there is a representa- 
tion of an ear of summer barley, forty-five 
inches long, grown in ground manured with 
soap ashes. In South Australia the experi- 
ment has been tried of placing a peach-stone 
in the ground, and dressing the latter regularly 
with soapsuds, with the result that a strong 
plant has been reared, and abundance of fruit 
obtained. 

Bacon was, of course, aware that excessive 
nourishment was prejudicial to vegetation; 
but we are accustomed to consider that that 
is more universally the case than he seems to 
intimate as his opinion, for he says ; '' Dung, 
or Chalke, or Bloud, applied in Substance 
(seasonably) to the Roots of Trees, doth set 
them forwards. But to doe it unto Herbs, 
without a mixture of water or earth, it may 
bee these Helpes are too Hot." No doubt ; 
and the result often is also in regard to many 
fruit-trees, that where the ground is too rich, 
they run to wood, except such plants as 



Bacon as a Gardener. 95 

strawberries and raspberries, or such as the 
rose, which are not easily over-manured. 

He does not forget that there is another 
essential requisite in keeping trees in a state 
of full bearing strength. 

" Besides the two Means of Accelerating Germina- 
tion formerly described, the Mending of the Nourish- 
ment and Comforting of the Spirit of the Plant, there 
is a third ; which is the Making way for the Easie 
Comming to the Nourishment, and drawing it. And 
therefore gentle Digging and Loosening of the Earth 
about the Roots of Trees, And the Removing Herbes 
and Flowers into new Earth, once in two yeares, 
(which is the same thing ; For the new Earth is ever 
» looser,) dothe greatly further the Prospering and 
Earlinesse of Plants. 

"But the most admirable Acceleration by Facili- 
tating the Nourishment, is that of Water. For a 
Standard of a Damaske Rose with the Root on, was 
set in a Chamber, where no Fire was, upright in an 
Earthen Pan, full of Faire Water, without any Mixture, 
halfe a Foot under the Water, the Standard being more 
than two foot high above the Water : Within the 
Space of ten dayes the Standard did put forth a faire 
Greene leafe, and some other little buds, which stood 
at a stay, without any Shew of decay or withering, 
more than seven Dales. But afterwards that Leafe 
faded, but the young Buds did sprout on ; which after- 



96 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

«ere somewhat paler »d hgMe ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ 

Leaves use to bee abroad Not ^^ .^ ^.^^^^ 
„ere in the End of October , ^^^^ ^^^ ^^,,^ 

had beene in the Sl»»g »- •^' ^,) ^^ have growne 
with greater strength, and U y ;, 

on to beare Flowers. By tms ^^ ^ ^^^^ 

L it seemeth) Roses set » "«/ ^^j^^^ j. Matter of 
£ng supported with s--tay^, ^^.^^^^ ^^^^ ^.^^ 

Rarenesse and «^=f'«' ^ Ve ^0=-='^"''"^ *'' 
is the more strange for hat t ^.^^ jj 

put, at the -n^^t""^';"tJ the fourth Part to the 
dung, the Horse-dung about t .^ 

wise put, at the same -me ^l-d;^^^^^,,,esrooted, 
or three Fingers deepe, an^ ; There were 

and continued longatterfurtti^^^^^^R^ddish- 
also put in a Beet-Roo^ aBo^rag ^^^^^^ ^,^^^ ^„ 

Root, wWchhadalttorLeav ^^^ ^^.^^ j^^^^^,_ 

the Roots, and «'* " =f ^^ „f November. 

And so continued till the end ^^^^^.^ ^^^ ^ee 

^ .. Kote that «f ~'^' °^„^;f;„d Ripening, there rs 
Accelerated in the.r Comm mg ^^^^ ^j, 

a double f -m ; Th;o- m^^^^^^^^^^^ f the other in the 

things bear when ttiey c 



Bacon as a Gardener, 97 

Swiftnesse of their Returnes : For in some Grounds 
which are strong, you shall have a Raddish, etc., come 
in a Month ; that in other Grounds will not come in 
two ; And so make double Returnes." 

These and other similar memoranda have 
for us a high and enduring interest — an in- 
terest created and sustained by the vast 
and imperishable fame of the writer. It is 
excessively likely that we have at the pre- 
sent moment among us many respectable 
nurserymen who have never heard the name 
of Bacon, and who, if this book were placed 
in their hands, would pronounce his experi- 
ments empirical and his remarks obsolete. 
From a commonplace standpoint most 
assuredly they are, and yet I deem them 
worth reproducing here, because they illus- 
trate one of the less familiar aspects of a 
many-sided intellect. 

The value and bearing of these observa- 
tions in the eyes of practical or scientific 
specialists of our day are not a matter, I 
apprehend, of the smallest consequence. 
But we have to look at the man and the 
time. We have to ^ nember his imperfect 



98 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

training and opportunities, the incessant 
demands on him from official and social 
duties, and his manifold literary engage- 
ments. Yet what minute and affectionate 
attention to all the details of the garden, 
what a wide and inexhaustible sympathy with 
the beauties and wonders of Nature, these 
pages of the Sylva Sylvarum disclose to us ! 
No point is too minute to attract and deserve 
his notice ; and the operations conducted 
under his eye are described as copiously and 
enthusiastically, although they may refer to 
some comparatively trivial matter, as if they 
formed the key-stone to a new system ol 
philosophy. Of this we have witnessed 
evidence in the passages already cited, and 
we shall meet with abundance of similar 
traits as we proceed. 

After a series of elaborate directions for 
grafting roses, Bacon refers to a common 
notion of his time in relation to fruit trees. 

" Men have entertained a Conceit," says he, ** that 
sheweth prettily, Namely, that if you graft a Late- 
comming Fruit upon a Stocke of a Fruit-tree that 
commeth early, the Graft will beare Fruit Early ; as a 



Baco7i as a Gardener. 99 

Peach upon a Cherry ; And contrariwise, if an Early- 
Comming Fruit upon a Stocke of a Fruit Tree that 
Commeth late, the Graft will beare Fruit late, As a 
Cherry upon a Peach. But these are but Imagina- 
tions, and untrue. The cause is, for that the Cions 
overruleth the Stocke quite ; And the Stocke is but 
Passive onely, and giveth Aliment, but no Motion to 
the Graft." 

Here is another idea, which still forms 
part of the popular creed, and perhaps 
rightly : — 

" A Tree, at the first Rooting, should not bee shaken, 
until it hath taken Root fully : And therefore some 
have put two little Forkes about the Bottome of their 
Trees, to keepe them upright ; But after a yeares 
Rooting, then shaking doth the Tree good, by Loosen- 
ing of the Earth, and (perhaps) by exercising (as it 
were) and stirring the Sap of the Tree." 

It is in this case, as in others, a truism, 
that there is scarcely perhaps a first-class 
florist of the day, who could not revise every 
page of the Sylva Sylvarum^ and who might 
not characterize it as a waste of time even to 
peruse such a volume. Of course, the same 
argument may be employed towards all 
obsolete treatises on progressive sciences ; 



100 Gleaninp's in Old Garden Literature. 

but it is really one of small validity as a rule, 
and so far as Bacon is concerned of none 
whatever. 

What we have to do here is to throw our- 
selves back two centuries or so, and stand 
by the side of this illustrious man, realizing 
the diflSculties under which he worked, the 
important public avocations which demanded 
his time and thought, the slender encourage- 
ment afforded to such subjects and such 
inquiries ; and then, when we have armed 
ourselves with the means of more truly 
judging, let us consider his ardour in experi- 
mental philosophy, his minute attention to 
details, his cordial interest in all topics 
connected with Nature, his wide range of 
culture and largeness of sympathy, his 
comprehensive grasp and his profound and 
delicate insight, and his descent from the 
woolsack to investigate the economy of 
manure beds. Only More before him had 
displayed any share of this versatility of 
genius and breadth of learning on the part of 
a professional lawyer and a lord chancellor ; 
and in the long roll of keepers of the Great 



Bacon as a Gardener. loi 

Seal there is but a single other name which 
we can couple with those earlier two — the 
name of Brougham. But to return to the 
Sylva Sylvanim. Speaking of wall fruit, the 
author observes : — 

" It is usually practised, to set T^-ees that require much 
Sunne, upon Walls against the South ; as Apricots^ 
Peaches^ Plums, Vines, Figs, and the like. It hath a 
double Commoditie ; The one, the Heat of the Wall by 
Reflexion ; The other, the Taking away of the Shade ; 
For when a Tree groweth round, the upper Boughes 
over-shadow the lower : But when it is spread upon a 
Wall, the Sunne commeth alike, upon the upper, and 
lower Branches. 

" It hath also been practised (by some) to pull off 
some Leaves from the Trees so spread, that the Sunne 
may come upon the Bough and Fruit the better.' There 
hath been practised also a Curiositie, to set a Tree upon 
the North-Side of a Wall, and at a little height, to draw 
him thorow the Wall, and spread him upon the South' 
Side: Conceiving that the Root and lower Part of the 
Stocke should enjoy the Freshnesse of the Shade ; 
and the Upper Boughes, and Fruit, the Comfort of 
the Sunne. But it sorted not ; the Cause is, for that 

' This idea is not generally approved at present, 
because, if the foliage is too thin when the fruit is 
swelling, the heat of the autumn sun on the wall 
is apt to draw the moisture. 



I02 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

the Root requireth some Comfort from the Sunne, 
though under the Earth, as well as the Bodie : and 
the Lower Part of the Bodie more than the Upper, 
as wee see in Compassing a Tree below with straw. 

" The Lownesse of the Bough, where the Fruit com- 
meth, maketh the i^^'z/zV greater, and to ripen better; For 
you shall ever see in Apricots, Peaches, or Melo-Cotones, 
upon a wall, the greatest Fruits towards the Bottome. 
And in France the Grapes that make the Wine, grow 
upon low Vines, bound to small Stakes. And the raised 
Vines in Arbours make but Verjuyce. It is true, that in 
Italy, and other Countries, where they have hotter 
Sunne, they raise them upon Ehnes, and Trees ; But I 
conceive, that if the French Manner of Planting low, 
were brought in use there, their Wines would be 
stronger and sweeter. But it is more chargeable in 
respect of the props. It were good to trie whether a 
Tree grafted somewhat neare the Ground, and the 
lower boughes onely maintained, and the higher con- 
tinually proined off, would not make a larger Fruit.^* 

These are his remarks and suggestions on 
grafting :— 

' ' There is no doubt but that Grafting (for the most 
Part) doth 7neliorate the Fruit. The Cause is manifest ; 
For that the Nourishment is better prepared in the 
Stocke, than in the Crude Earth: But yet note well, that 
thei^e bee some Trees, that are said to come up more 
happily from the Kernell, than from the Graft ; As the 



Bacon as a Gardener. 103 

Peach and Melocotone. The Cause I suppose to bee, 
for that those Plants require a Nourishment of great 
Moisture; And though the Nourishment of the Stocke 
be finer, and better prepared, yet it is not so moist, 
and plentifull, as the Nourishment of the Earth. And 
indeed we see those Fruits are very Cold Fruits in their 
Nature. 

" It hath beene received, that a Smaller Peare, grafted 
upon a Stocke that beareth a greater Peare, will become 
Great. But I thinke it is as true, as that of the Prime- 
Fruit u^on the Late Stocke; An& e coittroverso ; which we 
rejected before : for the Cions will governe. Neverthe- 
lesse it is probable enough, that if you can get a Cions 
to grow upon a Stocke of another kinde, that is much 
moyster than his own Stocke, it may make the Fruit 
Greater, because it will yeeld more plentifull Nourish- 
ment ; Though it is like it will make the Fruit Baser. 
But generally the Grafting is u^on a drier Stock; As the 
Apple upon a Crab; the Peare upon a Thome; &c. Yet 
it is reported, that in the Low-Countries they will graft 
an Apple- Cions upon the Stock of a Colewort, and it will 
beare a great flaggy Apple; The Kernell of which, if it 
be set, will bee a Colexvort, and not an Apple. It were 
good to trie, whether an Apple- Cions will prosper, if it 
be grafted upon a Sallow, or upon a Poplar, or upon an 
Alder, or upon an Elme, or upon an Horse- Plumme, 
which are the moystest of Trees. I have heard that it 
hath been tried upon an Elme, and succeeded. 

" It is manifest by Experience, that Flowers Removed 
wax greater, because the Nourishment is more easily 



1 04 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

come by, in the loose Earth. It may bee, that Oft 
Regrafting of the same Cions, may likewise make Fruit 
greater ; As if you take a Cions, and graft it upon a 
Stocke the first yeare ; And then cut it off, and graft it 
upon another Stock the second yeare ; and so for a third ; 
Or fourth yeare ; And then let it rest, it will yeeld after- 
ward, when it beareth, the greater Fruit.^'' 

Naturally Bacon is more or less frequently 
found basing his conclusions on imperfect 
information or data ; but at all events he dis- 
carded most of the vulgar errors of his time 
in relation to philosophical and scientific 
investigations. He says : — • 

' * There are many Ancient and Received Traditions 
and Observations, touching the Sympathy and Antipathy 
of Plants; For that some will thrive best growing neare 
others ; which they impute to Sympathy : And some 
worse ; w*'^ they impute to Antipathy. But these 
are Idle and Ignorant Conceits ; And forsake the true 
Indication of the Causes; as the most Part of Experi- 
ments, that concerne Sympathies and Antipathies doe. 
For as to Plants.^ neither is there any such Secret i^;7V«^- 
ship, or Hatred, as they imagine ; And if we should be 
content to call it Sympathy, and Antipathy, it is utterly 
mistaken ; For their Sympathy is an Antipathy, and 
their Antipathy is a Sympathy : For it is thus ; Whereso- 
ever one Plant draweth such a particular Juyce out of 



Bacon as a Gardener. 105 

the Earth, as it quaUfieth the Earth ; So as that Juyce 
which remaineth is fit for the other Plant, there the 
Neighbourhood doth good ; Because the Nourishments 
are contrarie, or severall : But where two Plants draw 
(much) the same Juyce, there the Neighbourhood 
hurteth ; For the one deceiveth the other." 

A little farther on, he has more to tell us 
about these superstitions, absurdities, and 
prejudices : — 

" Some of the Ancients, and likewise divers of the 
Moderne Writers, that have laboured in Naturall 
Magick, have noted a Sympathy, between the Sunne, 
Moone, and some Principall Starres; And cetaine Herbs, 
and Plants. And so they have denominated some Herbs 
Solar ^ and some Lunar ; And such like Toyes put 
into great Words. It is manifest, that there are 
some Flowers, that have Respect to the Sunne, in 
two Kindes ; The one by Opening and Shutting; And 
the other by Bowing and Inclining the Head. For 
Mary-golds^ Tulippa^s, Pimpernell, and indeed most 
Flowers, doe open or spread their Leaves abroad, 
when the Sun^ie shineth serene and faire : And 
againe, (in some part,) close them, or gather them in- 
ward, either towards Night, or when the Skie is over- 
cast. Of this there needeth no such Solemne Reason to 
be assigned ; As to say, that they rejoyce at the pre- 
sence of the Sunne; And mourne at the absence thereof. 
For it is Nothing else, but a little Loading of the Leaves, 



lo6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

and Swelling them at the Bottome, with the Moisture 
of the Aire ; whereas the drie Aire doth extend them : 
And they make it a Peece of the wonder, that Garden 
Claver will hide the Stalke, when the Sunne sheweth 
bright ; Which is nothing, but a full Expansion of the 
leaves. For the Bowing ?ixA Inclining the Head ; it is 
found in the great Floiver of the Sunne ; in Marigolds, 
Wart-zejort, Mallozv- Flowers ; and others. The Cause 
is somewhat more Obscure than the former ; But I take 
it to bee no other, but that the Part against which the 
sunne beateth, waxeth more faint and flaccide in the 
Stalke ; And therby lesse able to support the Flower. ^^ 

Like his contemporary Shakespeare, he 
did not scruple or disdain to avail himself 
of all possible vehicles for illustration or 
comparison. When he wrote the passage 
which I copy below, he had in his remem- 
brance a scene at which he had been present; 
it is a curious bit — a fragment of the popu- 
lar street-life of London, which one would 
have rather expected to encounter in the 
pages of Strutt or Brand : — 

*' What a little Moisture will doe in Vegetables, even 
though they be dead, and severed from the Earth, 
appeareth wel in the Experiment of luglers. They 
take the Beard of an Gate; which (if you marke it well,) 



Bacon as a Gardener. 107 

is wreathed at the Bottome and one smooth entire 
Straw at the Top. They take onely the Part that is 
Wreathed, and cut off the other, leaving the Beard 
halfe the Breadth of a Finger in length. Then they 
make a little Crosse of a Quill, long-wayes of that Part 
of the Quill, which hath the Pith ; And Crosse- wayes of 
that Peece of the ^/<z7/ without Pith ; The whole Crosse 
being the Breadth of a Finger high. Then they pricke 
the Bottome where the Pith is, and thereinto they put 
the Oaten-beard, leaving halfe of it sticking forth of 
the Quill : Then they take a little white Box of wood, 
to deceive Men, as if somewhat in the Box did worke 
the Feat : In which, with a Pinne, they make a little 
Hole, enough to take the Beard, but not to let the 
Crosse sinke downe, but to stick. Then likewise by 
way of Imposture, they make a Question; As, Who is 
the Fairest Woman in the Company ? Or, Who hath a 
Glove, or Card ? And cause Another to name divers 
persons : And upon every Naming they stick the Crosse 
in the Box, having first put it towards their mouth, as if 
they charmed it ; And the Crosse stirreth not ; But 
when they come to the Person that they would take ; 
As they hold the Crosse to their Mouth, they touch the 
Beard v^A'Oa. the Tip of their Tongue, and wet it ; And so 
stick the Crosse in the Box ; And then you shall see it 
turne finely and softly, three or foure Turnes ; which is 
caused by the untwining of the ^^ar^by the Moisture. 
You may see it more evidently, if you sticke the 
Crosse betweene your fingers, in stead of the Box ; And 
therefore you may see, that this Motion, which is 



io8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

Effected by so little Wet, is stronger than the Closing 
or Bending of the Head of a Marigold.''^ 

His Sixth Century Bacon opens with a dis- 
quisition on what he calls Curiosities, such 
as the growth of several kinds of fruit on 
one tree, coreless fruit, double flowers, and 
flowers of special colours. I wish very 
heartily that I had space to accommodate a 
few more extracts from this extraordinary 
work ; but I must ask the reader to be satis- 
fied with one more, and that on the subject 
of degeneration by neglect : — 

" The rule is certaine, that Plants for want of Cul- 
ture, degenerate to be baser in the same Kinde ; And 
sometimes so farre, as to change into another Kinde. 
I. The Standing long ^■a.w^ not being Removed, maketh 
them degenerate. 2. Droiight, unlesse the Earth of it 
selfe bee moist, doth the like. 3. So doth Removing 
ijito worse Earth, or Forbearing to compost the Earth ; 
As wee see that Water-Mint turneth into Field-Mint ; 
And the Colcwort into Rape by Neglect, &c. 

" Whatsoever Fruit useth to be set upon z-Root, or a 

Slip, if it be sowne, will degenerate. Grapes sowne, Figs, 

Almonds, Pomgranate Kernels sowne ; make the Fruits 

degenerate, and become Wilde. And againe, Most of 

hose Fruits that use to be grafted, if they be set of 



Bacon as a Gardener, 109 

Kernels^ or Stones, degenerate. It is true, that Peaches, 
(as hath beene touched before,) doe better upon Stones 
Set, than upon Grafting : And the Rule of Exception 
should seeme to be this ; That whatsoever Plant re- 
quireth much Moisture, prospereth better upon the 
Stone, or Kernell, than upon the Graft, For the 
Stocke, though it giveth a finer Nourishment, yet it 
giveth a scanter, than the Earth at large. 

'^ Seeds, if they bee very Old, and yet have strength 
enough to bring forth a Plant, make the Plant degene- 
rate. And therefore skilfull Gardiners make triall of 
the Seeds, before they buy them, whether they be good 
or no, by Putting them into Water gently Boyled ; 
And if they bee good, they will sprout within halfe 
an Houre. 

" It is strange which is reported, that Basill too much 
exposed to the Suntie, doth tume into Wilde Time : 
Although those two Herbs seeme to have small Affinity; 
but Basill is almost the onely Hot Herbe, that hath Fat 
and Succulent Leaves ; Which Oylinesse, if it be 
drawne forth by the Sunne, it is like it will make a 
very great Change. 

"There is an old tradition, \^\-^\. Boughs ofOake, put 
into the Earth, will put forth Wilde Vines : Which if it 
be true, (no doubt,) it is not the Oake that turneth into 
a Vine, but the Oake-Bough Putrifying, qualifieth the 
Earth, to put forth a Vine of it selfe." 

He has a good deal to say about the colours 
of flowers and fruit, and after pointing out to 



1 1 o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

us that in berries the white is commonly 
more delicate and sweet in taste, as in grapes, 
rasps, currants, and strawberries, so in fruit 
the white is usually inferior : — 

"As in Peare-Plums, Damasins, &c. And the 
Choicest Plummes are blacke ; The Mulberrie, (which 
though they call it a Berry, is a Fruit, ^ is better the 
Blacke, than the White. The. Harvest White- Pluvwie^ 
is a base PluDwie ,• And the Verdoccio and White Date- 
Phnnnie, are no very good Phimmes. The Caztse is, for 
that they are all Over-watry : Whereas an higher Con- 
coction is required for Sweetnesse, or Pleasure of 
Taste ; And therefore all your dainty Plummes, are a 
little drie, and come from the Stone ; As the Muskle- 
Plumme, the Damasin-Plu?nme, the Peach, the Apricot, 
&c. Yet some Fruits, which grow not to be Blacke, 
are of the Nature of Berries, sweetest such as are 
Paler ; As the Cccur-Cherry, which inclineth more to 
White, is sweeter than the Red ; but the Egriot is 
more sowre." 

Bacon was instrumental in laying out and 
planting the garden and grounds of the Inn, 
of which he is the greatest ornament. Much 
of the space which he secured for this object 
still remains consecrated to the original 
purpose; but Verulam Buildings have en- 



Bacon as a Gardener. 1 1 1 

croached on a portion ; the average lawyer 
or parson has no sentiment; the Antients 
of Gray's Inn are as destitute of esprit as 
the members of Convocation or the Dome 
of St. PauFs. 

Contemporary with Bacon lived Richard 
Gardiner, of Shrewsbury, who in 1603 put 
forth Profitable Instructions for the Manuring^ 
Sowiftg, and Planting of Kitchen Gardens. 

The Preface of this work is addressed by 
the writer to "his loving neighbours and 
friends, within the towne of Shrewsburie, in 
the countie of Salop ; " and it is manifest 
from the tone and language of it, as well as 
from the presence of two prayers at the end 
by way of peroration, that Gardiner was in 
holy orders, although no mention of that fact 
occurs on the title. He seems to say that 
at that date the condition of horticulture in 
Shropshire among the lower ranks was very 
unsatisfactory ; but he trusts that his publica- 
tion will inaugurate an improved state of 
affairs, and in a copy of encomiastic verses 
by a friend, Edward Thorne (or Thornes, of 
Melverley), this sanguine view is supported 



112 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

and echoed. I am afraid that I should not 
be thanked for quoting Thorne at large ; 
yet let me give four lines of his doggerel 
eulogy : — 

' ' The rich likewise and better sorte, 
His labours could not misse : 
Which makes them many times to thinke, 
That Salop London is." 

To do no more than justice to Gardiner 
himself, however, his tract deals in a sensible 
and practical way enough with the subject 
undertaken. He includes beans, carrots, 
turnips, onions, cucumbers (which Thorne, 
by the way, approaches nearer to the French 
by terming concofnbers), artichokes, cabbages, 
lettuces, and parsnips ; and he very strongly 
represents the advantage which might accrue 
from a more extended cultivation of these 
vegetables, especially carrots, instead of de- 
pending on the continental supply, which 
afforded to the foreigners so lucrative a 
trade. He dwells most in detail on the 
carrot. 

He particularises three species as being 



Bacon as a Gardener, 113 

then known among us, or at least in 
Shropshire, — the great long yellow carrot, 
the great short carrot, and the wild carrot ; 
of which the last was worthless for culinary- 
purposes. We cannot help observing that, 
besides his devout preface and the prayers 
which wind up his Instructions, he lays stress, 
in common with most, if not all, of the old 
school, on an observance of the planetary 
conditions essential to the successful growth 
of crops. But he quaintly intersperses 
ordinary rules for sowing or planting with 
pious sentiments and even objurgations ; 
for, in speaking of the vendors of bad 
seed, he denounces them as Caterpillars, 
declares them worthy of execution, avers 
that the Almighty God doth behold this 
monstrous deceit, and trusts that He will 
either turn their hearts or confound their 
proceedings. 

So saith the mild and meek pastor. If he 
had only known it, his little book would 
have been infinitely more agreeable without 
this theological bitterness and invective. It 
is so far a gain that in the concluding Prayers 

8 



114 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

he has not brought in any pleasant wishes 
for the fraudulent seedsmen, and, indeed, 
these compositions seem to have nothing to 
do with the rest of the volume, as they might 
with equal propriety have been tacked on to 
anything else. 

If one turns back to Bacon, after perusing 
the pages of such a man, what a distance in 
intellect there seems to be between the 
Viscount St. Alban and this worthy Salopian 
kitchen-gardener ; and yet, measured by his 
rural contemporaries, the latter is to be 
viewed as a reformer and the holder of 
enlightened opinions. 



X. 



Herbs and Vegetables — High Price of 
Vegetables in Early Times — The 
Suburbs of London celebrated as a 
Growing-ground — Rarity and Esti- 
mation OF the Potato — Asparagus — 
Sanitary Value of Vegetables. 

ARSLEY, garlic, fennel, chibbals 
or small onions (the civolli or 
cepulm of Johannes de Garlandia), 
the leek, and other important factors in 
the culinary art were now in general use, not 
only among the professed cooks of the 
wealthier classes, but among the cottagers, 
whose humble fare they contributed to 
render more savoury. 

Among vegetables the surviving records 
of the fifteenth century indicate the parsnep, 
the beetroot, the lettuce, the green pea, and 




1 1 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

others of which I shall give an account ; and 
of fruit and other trees, the pearmain (a 
species of apple mentioned in Drayton's 
PolyolMon as a novelty), the pomegranate, the 
bullace-plum, the mulberry, the masculum 
(which is glossed orange), the damson, the 
filbert, the almond, the dog-rose, the syca- 
more, and the cedar. The peach was also 
known, as well as the apricot or apricock ; 
but the nectarine is not specified ; it may, 
like the apricot, have been included among 
the plums, although in the stone and skin 
both so materially differ therefrom. 

Onion {yne-leac) and garlic {gar-leac) have 
been noticed as entering into the cookery of 
the eleventh or twelfth century. 

Now enters the onion-seller as an inde- 
pendent calling, shewing how largely that 
precious esculent began to enter into our 
cookery ; and also the vendor of apples. 

The Spanish onion was in use in the time 
of Charles II. Evelyn reports it in his letter 
to Lord Sandwich (1668) : — 

' * The Spanish onion seed is of all other the most 
excellent, and yet I am not certain whether that which 



High Price of Vegetables. 117 

we have out of Flanders and St. Omers be all the 
Spanish seed which we know of. My Lady Clarendon 
(when living) was wont to furnish me with seed that 
produced me prodigious crops." 

The radish, as well as the onion, had been 
knovi^n in the eleventh century. Worlidge 
says: *' Radishes in the more Southern 
Countries are a delicate meat, especially if 
sown in brackish lands, or watered with 
brackish waters, and therefore were they in 
such esteem with the Egyptians/' He goes 
through the various known kinds, including 
the horse-radish, which was then already in 
vogue as a sauce. 

An entry in the Privy Purse Expenses of 
Henry VH, under May 24th, 1496, seems 
to point to the payment of a reward — and a 
very handsome one — for a dish of green 
peas very early indeed in the season. They 
must have been reared in a very sheltered 
spot, or with artificial warmth. The amount 
given to the donor was 3^". 4^.=;j^i of our 
money. The item runs thus : "To a man 
for a present of pescoddes 3^. 4^." This 
could scarcely have been for seed, as it was 



1 1 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

too late to sow them ; the character of the 
premium offered suggests a more immediate 
gratification of the royal palate. 

The peck of green peas, which is said 
to be offered for sale annually at Covent 
Garden Market for sixpence as a customary 
obligation, is not claimed till the ist of 
June. 

The artichoke described by Turner and 
Gerarde, authors of Herbals between 1550 
and 1597, is that of which the head supplies 
the edible portion. Turner recommends that 
the leaves should be boiled with wine and oil. 
Gerarde tells us that they were sometimes 
eaten raw with pepper and salt, or else 
boiled in broth with pepper seasoning, and 
served "with other junkets." Parkinson, in 
his Theatre of Plants (1629), speaking of the 
Teriisalem or sun-flower artichoke, which is 
totally distinct, seems to say that they used 
in his day to make pies of the tubers boiled, 
" which," he assures us, " are a delicate kind 
of baked meat." 

The common artichoke is evidently, as 
Pliny noticed, an evolution from the thistle ; 



Suburbs of London^ 119 

and it is the only species of the latter which 
is eaten on the hither side of the Tweed. 

The suburbs of London were enjoying in 
the time of James I., as they probably had 
under his predecessor, a high character for 
the vegetables, especially cabbages and 
lettuces, which they sent to market. Busino 
the Italian, who was here in 1617 — 18, and 
who disparages our wine and our fruit, speaks 
highly of our cabbages. It is highly curious 
to find a custom, which I remember still 
prevalent at Brompton in and about 1840, 
mentioned by our visitor as coming under 
his observation more than two centuries 
before — I allude to the practice of partaking 
of fruit at the nurseries, and gathering it 
on the spot ; and another odd thing Busino 
noted, which was the way the people in 
London had of eating fruit in the streets as 
they went along, as well as at places of 
amusement. 

It is incidentally brought to light, at the 
same time, that in 1619 the prices for some 
descriptions of vegetables were extravagantly 
high. Lysons says that " in the bill for 



1 20 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

Alleyn's foundation dinner at Dulwich, 
September 13th, 1619, two cauliflowers are 
charged -i^s. (about 95. perhaps according to 
the present value of money), thirty lettuces 
4^., sixteen artichokes 3^. 4^., while carrots, 
turnips, rosemary, and bays are estimated 
only at 4^. altogether. 

It is well known that the potato was 
introduced into England in the reign of 
Elizabeth, and Gerarde the Herbalist, who 
had some in his garden in Holborn, figures 
a specimen in his book printed in 1597. 
He informs us that he had received one 
from Virginia; but we are left under the 
necessity of conjecturing whether he was 
indebted for the present to the hands of 
Sir Walter himself, and whether it is the 
very one engraved. Both he and Dr. 
Venner of Bath considered the potato con- 
ducive to flatulency, like the Jerusalem arti- 
choke. 

A recipe for a tart which occurs in Dawson's 
Good Housewife's Jeiml {i^()6) treats a potato 
as a leading ingredient, — a testimony to the 
rate at which the vegetable was then prized, 



Rarity of the Potato. 1 2 r 

like some newly-landed product from rich 
Cathay or Araby the Blest : — 

" Take two quinces, and two or three burre rootes 
and a Potaton, and pare youre Potaton and scrape your 
roots, and put them into a quart of wine, and let them 
boyle till they bee tender, and put in an ounce of dates, 
and when they be boiled tender, drawe them through 
a strainer, wine and all, and then put in the yolkes of 
eight eggs, and the braynes of three or four cocke- 
sparrowes, and straine them into the other, and a 
little rose water, and seeth them all with sugar, cinna- 
mon, and ginger, and cloves, and mace ; and put in a 
little sweet butter, and set it upon a chafing-dish of 
coles between two platters, to let it boyle till it be 
something bigge." 

Long after the age of Elizabeth the potato 
remained a rarity in this country. As Dr. 
Rimbault has pointed out, it was long ranked 
with the date, the orange, and the plum of 
Genoa ; and from a passage in Massinger's 
New Way to pay Old Debts (1633), it may 
be inferred that it was at that period still 
regarded as a dainty. 

It seems to be thought that potatoes were 
first propagated in Ireland in 16 10 or there- 



122 Gleaninzs in Old Garden Literature, 



•2> 



abouts, just when James I. was carrying out 
the plantation of Ulster. 

Worlidge remarks that potatoes are much 
used in Ireland and in America as bread, 
and are of themselves also an usual food ; 
which is to some extent an explanation of 
the pains which John Forster, of Hanlop, 
took in 1664 to bring the potato into notice 
and more general use as a vegetable. They 
planted them in the same way as ourselves ; 
and Worlidge acquaints us that in Wales they 
were accustomed to cultivate both them and 
the artichoke on the vacant spaces along the 
highways, — those green slips of ground about 
which so much is being now said. 

But while we listen to what Worlidge has 
to tell us about the conversion of the potato 
to farinaceous objects, we must bear in mind 
what Venner has set down about its ordinary 
employment as a vegetable in 1620. The 
reader of these pages will recollect the tradi- 
tion that the first tubers from Virginia were 
given by Sir Walter Raleigh to the grand- 
father of Sir Robert Southwell. The root 
had, perhaps, been known in Spain prior to 



Asparagus. 123 

its introduction among us ; but, although 
those imported from Spanish ports hither 
were distinguished from such as came from 
America, both doubtless were of a common 
Virginian parentage. In the earlier part of 
the seventeenth century, however, the Spanish 
potato was still preferred to those of English 
growth. 

In the most ancient bills of fare many 
products of the kitchen-garden, which have 
long acquired a commonplace character, were 
still deficient, as asparagus, sea- kale, the 
cucumber, the artichoke, and, among fruits, 
the melon, the gooseberry, and the currant ; 
unless, owing to the obscure nomenclature, 
they evade our recognition. 

But the asparagus was extensively grown 
in the seventeenth century, and the cultivated 
sort seems to have been brought from 
Holland, although it was found wild in 
Worlidge's time (1677) i^ many places, in- 
cluding some meadows near Bristol; "wild 
or at least some bastard kind of them," are 
his words, and he adds, " But our more fair 
and large, usually called Dutch Asparagus, 



124 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

are propagated from seed." He goes at 
greater length into the method of propagation 
than I have any commission or need to do ; 
but I may just note that he judged it time 
to let the plants run to seed, when green peas 
and the Jerusalem artichoke came in. 

Evelyn, in his letter to Lord Sandwich, 
August 2 1 St, 1668, confirms his lordship's 
estimate of the wild asparagus in Lincolnshire 
and elsewhere, and describes it as " small and 
bitter, and not comparable to the cultivated." 

The practice of salting vegetables in early 
days probably arose from the imperfect know- 
ledge of the succession of sorts, especially in 
the north, rather than from their scarcity. 
But it appears that so late as 1595 high 
prices were still paid for imported cabbages 
and carrots. At a later date, Hull was a 
celebrated mart for cabbages and onions, of 
which the latter were sold, as now, by the 
rope. From abroad, particularly from the 
Netherlands, new varieties found their way 
to us, and a specimen for seed was, of 
course, at all times a welcome gift either to 
the professional or private grower. 



Value of Vegetables. 125 

Vegetables, however, in the course of 
time, really abounded. With the exception 
of a few, which have been more modernly 
introduced, the tables of Charles II.'s Eng- 
lishman and Englishwoman wanted little in 
this way. 

Their more extensive use in England was 
attended by the unexpected and beneficent 
effect of diminishing the ravages of leprosy. 
This fact was first pointed out by Gilbert 
White, in his Natural History of Selborne ; 
and there is little doubt, as I have suggested 
elsewhere, that the public health of England, 
and our pecuniary interests also, would be 
profited by a larger recourse to fish and 
green food and a more restricted employ- 
ment of butcher's meat. 

A free resort to vegetables, together with 
the removal of the necessity for using salt 
flesh to so great an extent, has also been 
instrumental in liberating us from a second 
scourge, — the scurvy, for which an English 
naval surgeon,* in the time of Charles I., was 

* The Surgeon^ s Mate^ or Military and Domestique 



126 Gleanings in Old Garden Literatiwe. 

the earliest who discovered and recom- 
mended the old remedy of lemon-juice. 

Surgery. By John Woodall, Master in Chirurgery. 
London, 1639, folio. For fuller particulars see 
Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections^ 2nd series, 1882, 
p. 659. 




XL 

Fruit-Trees — Home-made Wine — Beer 
— Bacon and Shakespeare on the 
Strawberry. 

;HE cultivation of the vine was 
prosecuted with much assiduity 
here in the sixteenth century. A 
Nominale of that date devotes a short 
section to the several terms applied to that 
valuable plant and its parts, and to the 
fruit. We find four Low Latin words for 
the grape, besides one for what is called the 
raisin ; and the compiler, in introducing 
vinea, does so in a way which helps us to 
believe that grape-growers had become in 
his day numerous and successful. He says : 
" Hec vinea, est locus ubique usitatus." 

The Italian visitor to Burleigh in James I.'s 
time, Orazio Busino, already cited, expressed 



128 Gleanincrs in Old Garden Literatw^e. 



"ii 



to Lord Exeter a doubt whether the grapes 
which he tasted there could be made into 
good wine ; but there is no doubt that wine 
of domestic vintage was commonly used, 
though not many degrees removed, perhaps, 
from the true vin ordinaire which you find 
in the cottages of the French peasantry. 
Lord Exeter told his Italian caller that his 
people were more hopeful as to the kind of 
compound which the Burleigh grapes would 
make. But until the artificial process of 
growth under glass at a high temperature was 
understood, our home-reared grapes were as 
sour as the October peach in a cold autumn 
is to-day. It is only in exceptional seasons 
that our out-of-door sweet-water grape arrives 
at present to anything approaching perfection. 
Wine of all sorts was, of course, to be had 
here from a very early date at a compara- 
tively moderate price. Whittinton, in his 
Vulgaria (1524), says: "A gallon of swete 
wyne is at viii. pens in London." It appears 
from an original license, granted by Sir 
Walter Raleigh in 1584 to Jeifery Bradshawe 
of Bradford, Yorkshire, to keep a wine 



Home-made Wine, 129 

tavern, that the price of French wines whole- 
sale was then about £^\\ a tun, and the 
retail price sixteen pence a gallon, and that 
sack, malmsey, and other sweet sorts were 
J[^Z the butt or pipe, and about two shillings 
the gallon. 

The culture of the vine and the utilisation 
of its fruit as well as that of other trees and 
plants for producing wines, attracted con- 
siderable attention during the reign of 
Charles II. 

The principal early authors on this par- 
ticular branch of the subject are Hughes, 
Worlidge, and Rose, of whom the last had 
been gardener to the Duchess of Somerset, 
and was subsequently taken into employment 
by the king. He was on friendly terms with 
Evelyn, and to the third edition of the 
French Gardener (1675) is annexed his Eng- 
lish Vineyard, on the separate title of which 
he is described as " Gardiner to His Majesty 
at His Royal Garden in St. James's." The 
essay arose out of a conversation between 
Rose and Evelyn in the garden at Essex 
House, and the remarks of the former ap- 



130 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

peared so pertinent, that Evelyn advised him 
to commit his notions to paper, and supplied 
him with the portion of it which relates to 
the preparation of wines. 

The other two publications to which I 
have referred above were not identical in 
scope. That by Hughes, printed before 
1670, deals principally with the treatment 
and propagation of the vine, while the Vine- 
turn Britanniciim of the accomplished 
Worlidge (1676) was dedicated rather to 
the manufacture of cyder and other drinks 
derived from fruit, with a description of a 
cyder-press ; and when he re-issued his 
volume in 1678 and 1691, he appended an 
Apiarium, or Discourse on Bees, — a subject 
which, as I must take this opportunity of 
mentioning, had been handled by Thomas 
Hill and Edmund Southerne in the reign of 
Elizabeth, and by Remnant, Levett, and 
others, in the following century, but by no 
one so capably as by Worlidge. 

Besides such men as Evelyn and Rose, and 
the professional writers on the subject, we 
find Sir William Temple trying to improve this 



Home-made Wine. 131 

branch of horticulture, in his beloved retreat 
or "corner," as he called it, at Sheen. In 
August, 1667, he tells Lord Lisle, that he is 
contriving how the riches of Sheen vines may 
be improved by half a dozen sorts which are 
not known there, " and which I think much 
beyond any that are." 

There is a vine of hoar antiquity at 
Valentines, near Ilford, in Essex, the residence 
of my late friend Dr. Ingleby; I question 
whether there be many such in England. 
That at Hampton Court is venerable enough, 
but the Ilford one is alleged to be its 
senior, nay, the very plant to which it owed 
its being, as sire and son are seen of a 
like altitude and girth, the one mounted to 
his prime, the other still undeclined from it. 

But while natural causes have always 
precluded England, as they always will in 
human likelihood, from becoming a wine- 
growing centre, there is no doubt that for a 
considerable length of time in what may be 
called the middle period of our history, not 
to speak of the Anglo-Saxon epoch, the vine 
was industriously cultivated here, and some 



132 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

sort of crude beverage extracted from it, 
which, under the name of verjuice, was 
largely utilized in ancient cookery. In recent 
times, moreover, as at Kirke's Nursery, at 
Old Brompton, grapes were reared with 
success for wine ; and no doubt both the 
white and black small sorts in favourable 
seasons may still serve such a purpose on an 
inconsiderable scale ; but that England could 
have ever produced grapes as she produces 
other crops, or that the manufacture was 
ever used at the tables of the great and rich, 
I apprehend to be most improbable. 

Yet Lysons, in his Environs (1795), refers 
to a caper tree in the garden at Campden 
House, Kensington, as having flourished and 
borne fruit every year for a lengthened period 
in the open air. It was sheltered from the 
north, and looked to the south-east. 

In the fifteenth century it was not a 
bunch, but a branch of grapes. 

Mead, which was among ourselves, in a 
ruder condition of social development, a 
staple article of supply and a favourite 
stimulant, and for which recipes are found 



Beer. 133 

in cookery books down to the last century, 
continues to be in general demand in Africa, 
where most of the tribes, according to the 
account of Commander Cameron, manufac- 
ture this liquor, just as we used to do, from 
the honey of the wild bee. 

They have a second liquor there called 
pombe, distilled from rice, like our arrack. 
There are many still living who recollect the 
rack punch at Vauxhall, and at the old 
restaurant kept by Simpson at Billings- 
gate. 

In Norway they have a similar liquor ex- 
tracted from the potato, and called Fmkck,,^^^ 
the natives are very partial to it, and not un- vVl ', 
frequently take it to excess. But they also 
use arrack. 

Mead and metheglin are, of course, the 
same word. Herman, in his Vidgaria (151 9), 
has *'we shall drynke methe or metheglen." 

The learned and enthusiastic Worlidge, in 
the second edition of his Vinetum Britannicutn 
(1676), describes, as I have mentioned, the 
new ingenio or mill for making cyder ; but I 
have before me a tract which he published 



134 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature, 

some years later, entitled The Most Easie 
Method for makifig the Best Cyder (1687). 

He speaks very highly of this beverage, 
saying : — 

" It is generally known, that few foreign drinks, as 
they are handed to us, are comparable to our English 
Cyder well made : Those being so adulterated in the 
several hands through which they pass, that they 
corrupt instead of repair, the Natures of them that 
drink them ; " 

SO that the dishonest sophistication and 
illegal marriage of wines are an old story. 

He divides his monograph into sections, 
thus : — 

*' I. The choice of the Fruit. 

" II. The Times for gathering and grinding Apples 
for Cyder. 

"III. The manner of grinding and pressing of 
Apples for Cyder. 

" IV. The ordering of Cyder after it is pressed. 

*' V. The ordering of Cyder in the first Reeking. 

"VI. The ordering of Cyder after it is superfine." 

At the end he announces that 

" This subject will be treated of more at large in 
the Second Part of Vmetuni Britannicum, now ready 
for the Press." 



Beer. 1 3 5 

But there was no edition between 1678 
and 1 69 1. The account is very interesting, 
but at the same time purely technical. 

Perry is first named, so far as I can find, 
in Nicholas Breton's Fantasticks (1626). I 
quote from the edition of 1661, published 
under his own name by Matthew Stevenson, 
with the title of the Twelve Moneths ; he 
mentions it under October thus : — " Make 
your Winter Cider and Perry." 

The pear and apple orchards of Hereford- 
shire were already famous in the seventeenth 
century. 

The early manufacture and development 
of beer among the English is of course con- 
nected with the culture of the hop plant; 
and I may refer the reader to what is, 
perhaps, the first work where the matter is 
treated technically and specially, though 
certainly not in detail — the Treatise on 
Brewingy by Hagecius or Hajck (1585), 
which seems to be the most ancient mono- 
graph upon this science that we possess. 

The passage where this author describes 
our drink is not very lengthy, and as it 



136 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

occurs in a little volume of the utmost rarity, 
I shall venture to copy it : — 

*'Potus, quo communiter Angli vtuntur, multiplex 
est : nempe vehemens, medius & imbecillior. Dis- 
crime inter hos penes vehemetiam & imbecillitatem 
calfactionem & refrigerationem, & penes substantias 
crassitiem et tenuitatem habetur. Apud Anglos 
triplex semper paratur potus, nempe aquosus, quern 
simpliciter Ceruisiam dicunt ; medius, quem tricapa- 
ninam ; potens, quem duplam Ceruisiam nuncupant. 
Simplex eosdem effectus prsestat, quos vinum aquosum: 
aperit siquidem, refrigerat et distributionem adiuvat. 
N'ec decipiatur aliquis credens, ob eius amaritudine 
calfacere partes enim, quae Ceruisiam amaram red- 
dunt, pauca admodum sunt, si ad reliquas conferas, 
quae in ipsa refrigerant. Quod colligere ex ratione 
lupulorum poteris ad aquce et hordei portiones. Cito 
prseterea amaritudo a Ceruisia euanescit : reliquarum 
vero partiii facultas tam diu permanet, donee in aliam 
transmutatur substantiam. Potens Ceruisia, qua 
duplium dicunt, potenter calefacit, et aliquid habet 
vehementiae, ut potens vinum. Tricapanina mediae 
naturae est ; manifeste calefacit, in mallo tamen 
vehemens est." 

He proceeds to remark on another kind 
of beer, called Ale (Alia) ; and the whole 
passage is worth attention, since we seem 



Bacon on the Strawberry, 137 

to be without any English work equally 
early, which deals with the malt liquor, 
brewed from hops, in use during the Tudor 
period. 

The raspberry, under the name of the 
hindberry, occurs in the eleventh century 
vocabulary, which we have so often had 
occasion to cite, as a herb. It was probably 
the wild variety, and may have been used 
for distillation. The strawberry is in the 
same list. 

The white strawberry Bacon, in his Sylva 
Sylvarum (1627), seems to prefer to the red, 
just as he does the white currant, white rasp 
berry, and white grape. But the ordinary 
red variety is certainly the favourite at 
present, and has a superior flavour. The 
white, or rather pink, one is very common 
in Ireland, and used to be much grown 
also here. 

In the Frtvy Purse Expenses of Henry VII., 
under June 30th, 1493, a woman receives 
IS. Sd. for bringing the king cherries and 
strawberries. This amount was, as in other 
cases, not the price of the fruit, but "in 



138 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

reward," otherwise royal largess. This 
fact is nowhere, perhaps, more curiously 
exemplified, than in another item in the 
same record, where a woman gets five 
shiUings on November 7 th, 1494, for two 
glasses of water. 

I think it exceedingly probable that both 
the strawberry and the raspberry were at first 
only known in this country in their wild 
varieties still surviving. In Shakespeare's 
time both descriptions of fruit had doubt- 
less been improved \ and he probably 
transfers to the previous century his obser- 
vation of the strawberries which grew in 
Holborn in his own day, where he makes 
the Duke of Gloucester, in Richard III., 
ask the Bishop of Ely to send for some of 
the "good strawberries" which the Duke 
said he had seen lately growing in his lord- 
ship's garden. The glimpses which we shall 
presently gain of the much earlier garden of 
Lord Lincoln in that locality, and of the 
royal grounds at Westminster, with the 
cherries and peaches which they yielded, 
taken with the fact that Holborn was the 



Shakespeare on the Strawberry. 139 

residence in 1597 of Gerarde, author of the 
Herbal^ encourage a presumption that the 
strawberry had in the Elizabethan period 
attained some degree of development. 

There is this in regard to its early history 
to be noted, that, while Shakespeare, in a 
play published in 1597, makes a bishop 
grow strawberries which live in the memory 
of a king, his contemporary Bacon, in the 
essay lately cited, only names a fruit which 
flourished in shady places. Both writers 
were describing alike what they had person- 
ally seen and eaten. But, on the whole, there 
is very slight likelihood that in the Elizabethan 
time the strawberry was very much advanced 
beyond the plant which still grows luxuriantly 
in certain soils and aspects, and the long- 
shaped fruit of which yields an edible seed- 
vessel of small size but agreeable flavour. 
In the West of England it occurs at the 
present day of a larger size than usual, and 
the elongated form of the vessel, which con- 
stitutes the fruit, is very noticeable. 

The pottle in which strawberries used to 
be sold within living recollection, and which 



1 40 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

helps to attest the small size of the fruit in 
former times, goes back to the fifteenth or 
even the fourteenth century ; it is as old as 
the days of Lydgate. But the term was 
also applied to a vessel for holding liquids. 
Wolsey and the Prior of Dunmow are both 
commemorated as regaling themselves on 
strawberries and cream. In 1549 a pottle 
of strawberries is said to have cost ten- 
pence, which is rather to be attributed to 
some accidental circumstance than to any 
improvement in the culture, for Henry VIII. 
ordered 35. Zd. to be given to some peasants 
who brought him what can only have been 
the v/ild berries. 

From a Metrical Vocabulary of the 
fourteenth century we may add the ban-nut 
or walnut, the warden-pear, the poplar, the 
wild vine, the juniper, the ivy, and the 
bay-tree. 

The warden-pear was formerly much used 
for cooking purposes, as well as for baking ; 
and our ancestors in the time of Shakespeare 
had warden-pies. One Quinby, of New 
College, Oxford, they say, having been 



The Warden-Pear. 141 

imprisoned by his warden for favouring the 
Reformation, was asked by his friends what 
he would eat, and he repHed, A Warden-pie : 

* ' But I would have it made only of two wardens," 
he added, '* our Warden of Oxford and our Warden 
of Winchester. For such a Warden-pie might do me 
and many another Christian good ; but give me no 
wardens of the tree, for they could not be any 
comfort to me." 

The warden-pie was composed of meat as 
well as pears. In the Winter's Tale^ the 
clown is made to say : " I must have saffron 
to colour the warden-pies." From a passage 
in Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge 
(16 1 5), we may conclude that the pear itself 
was usually eaten roasted : — 

'' I would have him roasted, like a warden, 
In brown paper." 

The French call this pear/^z>^ de garde. 



XII 



Fruit-Trees {continued) — The Peach, the 
Quince, the Medlar, the Pine-apple, 
AND THE Pomegranate — Introduc- 
tion OF THE Black Mulberry — 
Rhubarb — Lemons — The Tool-House 
Espaliers and Pruning — Forest 
Trees — Ancient Survivals — Hooke's 

" MiCROGRAPHIA " AND MoSSES. 

HE peach, which is far hardier even 
than some sorts of pears and plums, 
seems to have been successfully 
grown. Mr. Wright notices an official record 
of slips planted in the royal garden at 
Westminster in 1276 ; and we have evidence 
equally formal of the presence of the pear 
of St. Regie and many others in the Earl of 
Lincoln's garden in Holbom twenty years 




The Peach and the Quince. 143 

later. Both these gardens were also well 
provided with cherry trees, and the latter 
was assiduously cultivated from the twelfth 
century downward. Gower, the poet, who 
died an old man in 1408, refers to cherry 
feasts, as well as cherry fairs, in his Confessio 
Amantis. 

In the Dictionary of Garlandia (thirteenth 
century) occm?, per sua, which Mr. Wright m- 
ter-prets J>ersica= Mala persica= pesiches ; but 
I should not like to be sure of this without 
some corroboration. The garden in which 
these persica grew was not in England, but 
at Paris. 

The French Gardener (1658) gives thirty- 
eight varieties of this noble fruit. Perhaps 
there are as many still in use. The large 
October Peach only arrives at perfection 
with us, as regards flavour and sweetness, in 
late seasons — at least in the open air. 

The quince, which is no longer used to any 
large extent in cookery, and seems to have 
grown out of favour, was among our Saxon 
forefathers a rather conspicuous factor in its 
particular province. One almost regrets its 



144 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

deposition from its antique rank among its 
peers, for it is a noble ingredient in an apple 
tart in the proportion of one to twelve, and 
as a conserve it is quite sui generis. 

Recipes for pickling quinces are very usual 
in early collections. The fruit thrives best 
in the immediate neighbourhood of running 
water, and it requires a boat to gather it 
from the branches of the trees overhanging 
the Wandle in Surrey. 

It is singular that the flesh of the quince in 
texture and odour resembles the pine, whose 
partiality for water it partakes, while it leaves 
behind on the palate a flavour similar to an 
onion. 

*' Quinces," says Breton, in his Fantastic ks {1626) ^ 
under September, "should not be kept with other 
fruit, for the scent is offensive both to the other fruit, 
and to them that keep it, or come amongst it ; there- 
fore lay them by themselves in sweet straw, where 
they may have Ayr enough ; they must be packt with 
Medlars, and gathered with Medlars." 

A reference to the present writer's Mono- 
graph on Cookery in this series, where he 
furnishes a Selection of Recipes, will at once 



The Medlar and the Pine- Apple. 145 

shew how far more extensive than in these 
days was the utilisation of the quince, not 
only for preserving purposes, but for the 
manufacture of wine. 

The medlar occurs under January 2nd, 
1498-9, in thQ Privy Purse Expefises of Henry 
VII. , where 35'. 4^. is given to Sir Charles 
Somerset to reimburse him for some medlars 
and warden pears, which he had received for 
the king at Westminster. 

This old-fashioned fruit, which seems to 
have been in great vogue with former genera- 
tions, had a popular name, which supplies 
the pith of one or two stories in the Jest- 
Books, but which is scarcely reproducible. 

The picture, formerly at Strawberry Hill, 
which represents Rose, the royal gardener, 
presenting to Charles 11. a pine-apple 
or ananas, is the earliest testimony to the 
native cultivation of that plant, in which the 
English growers still maintain a pre-eminence. 
Attention to it was doubtless drawn by 
specimens imported from America, where, as 
in any other climate which is at once warm 
and moist, it flourishes without care, but 

10 



1 46 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

never approaches the excellence of the 
cultivated sorts. 

In swampy tropical districts the pine 
flourishes and grows wild. But even in the 
genial climate of the south of Italy and 
France it does not come to any perfection, 
owing to the too great prevalence of dry 
weather. 

We learn from Maloniana that Mr. de 
Vyme, who was present during the earth- 
quake at Lisbon in 1755, first introduced it 
into Portugal. It was long, however, before 
it was much grown there. 

In India they have, besides other varieties, 
a sort much smaller than the West Indian one. 

In regard to the pomegranate, Evelyn's 
letter of 1668 to Lord Sandwich contains the 
subjoined paragraph : — 

"Your Excellency has rightly conjectured of the 
pomegranate. I have always kept it exposed, and the 
severest of our winters does it no prejudice. They 
will flower plentifully, but bear no fruit with us, either 
kept in cases and the repository, or set in the open 
air ; at least very trifling, with the greatest industry 
of stoves and other artifices." 



TJlc Black Mtdberry. 147 

Among the valuable importations from 
North America, at the end of the sixteenth 
and opening of the next century, was the 
Common or Black Mulberry tree, a fruit-bearer 
of slow growth in a strange climate, but 
precious on account of its fruit and foliage. 
We do not hear much of the former, however, 
which constitutes its chief attraction in our 
eyes; nor do I, I confess, subscribe to the 
conjecture (for it is apparently no more) 
that the pyne of the ancient Nominalia 
is identical herewith ; but about 1607 an 
energetic endeavour was made to propagate 
the tree throughout England for the sake 
of breeding the silkworm, and establishing a 
native manufacture of the produce. James I., 
however, requested lieutenants of shires to 
co-operate in this enterprise. Instructions 
for the planters were printed ; and Olivier de 
la Serre, a Frenchman residing in London, 
and Nicholas Goffe prepared between them 
a substantial volume on the subject, with an 
address to the reader, dated from Bacon 
House, May 20th, 1607, almost as if the 
owner was one of the prime movers in the 



148 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

business — a not unlikely thing, as the king 
evidently had its success so much at heart. 
It was rather an unfortunate scheme, for the 
black variety grows very slowly, and its leaves 
are not so favourable for the purpose as those 
of other kinds ; yet at the same time it 
was not a matter of option, since no other 
sort would have lived in England. 

Besides the request addressed to the lieu- 
tenants of counties, a strenuous effort was 
made in the metropolis itself, or rather in 
what was at that time a suburb, — namely, in 
the immediate vicinity of St. James's Palace 
and adjacent to the present Buckingham 
Palace, where some ground was appropriated 
to a mulberry plantation, with the necessary 
houses and appliances for the rearing of the 
silkworms and the manufacture of the fabric. 

But the experiment failed ; royal commands 
will not always prevail ; and the only advan- 
tage which the country derived from it was 
that very few districts within a moderate 
distance of London were unprovided with 
specimens of the Virginian Forester. In 
the immediate neighbourhood of the metro- 



TJie Black Mulberry. 149 

polis there are several, especially about 
Chelsea and Fulham. One in Cheyne Walk, 
Chelsea, has the honour of having been 
planted by Queen Elizabeth claimed on its 
behalf; and so have one or two others, 
sooth to say. 

It is scarcely likely, indeed, that any of 
the original trees planted at the commence- 
ment of the seventeenth century are now in 
existence ; but that may be what the writer 
of an excellent paper on the subject in the 
revised edition of Chambers's Encyclop(Edia 
(1874) means, when he refers to living 
specimens which had weathered three 
centuries. 

Even in the cit}' of London itself they 
had the mulberry. Until the ground was 
devoted to the formation of wharves, the 
garden of Vintners' Hall, in Upper Thames 
Street, ran down to the river, and contained 
some of these trees, under which the mem- 
bers and their friends sat and smoked. 
The mulberry is reared from seedlings or 
from truncheons. 

The Gentlefuaii^ s Magazine for February 



150 Gleanings in Old Garden Literattire. 

1797 notices the death of Mr. S. Brigs, 
the last surviving member of a Society of 
Herbarists at Norwich, who, among other 
services to horticulture, 

*'Were the first to cultivate and propagate the 
rhubarb plant in this country ; which they effected so 
successfully, as to rival in colour, flavour, and medi- 
cinal virtue, the roots of the Russia and Turkey 
kind." 

But the fact is that rhubarb, as a drug, 
had been known more than two centuries 
prior to the decease of Mr. Brigs. For in 
Gosson's Flays Confuted in Five Actions 
(1580), it is said that the physicians con- 
sidered this medicine hot, yet it cooled the 
hottest fevers. Nor is the writer in the 
magazine happier, I think, in his statement 
that the home-grown root equalled that im- 
ported from China, and popularly known 
as Turkey rhubarb. It has not even yet 
reached that point of perfection. Evelyn 
saw it growing in the Physic Garden at 
Oxford in 1654, 

The application of the plant to the pur- 
poses of the table does not seem to go farther 



Rhubarb. 151 

back than 1820, when Mr. Myatt, of Dept- 
ford, undertook the utilisation of the stalks 
as a fruit. 

In all these very early sources of informa- 
tion we fail to meet with certain esculents, 
which have grown too familiar to ourselves 
to attract much attention, — sea-kale, the 
tomato, the vegetable marrow. These have 
been of comparatively recent introduction. 

Preserved lemons were sold by the con- 
fectioners in James I.'s time. Perhaps they 
were so imported from the Continent. 
Brathwaite, who wrote in or before 161 7 his 
Rules and Orders for the Government of the 
House of an Earl., in adverting to the growth 
of luxury and extravagance, says that the 
old plain fashion of bringing the dishes to 
the table pleased no longer, but they must 
come — 

" Garnished about with sugar and preserved plums, 
the meat covered over with orangeade, preserved 
lemons, and with divers other preserved and conserved 
stuff fetched from the confectionaries." 

. Citrons are mentioned, however, as I have 



152 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

shown above, in Breton's Fantasticks (1626), 
as being usually set in April — probably under 
glass. 

Mr. Wright has explained the frequent 
occurrence of the pine and the reason for 
its cultivation among the Anglo-Saxons by 
the employment of its kernels in the same 
way as we now use olives. 

The favourite flavouring and colouring 
ingredient in ancient cookery was saffron. 
In the home counties, Saffron-Walden in 
Essex was the leading nursery-ground, and 
in token and recognition the arms of the 
town bear three saffron plants. But in the 
country the nobility had their own saffron 
beds in a separate enclosure or yard under 
lock and key, pans for drying it, and tubs 
for preparing it for culinary purposes. For 
a long period it was far too dear to come 
within reach of the middle class; in the 
reign of Henry VI. a pound must have been 
worth nearly a sovereign of money of the 
time ; and it at first occurs sparingly even 
in recipes for dishes of the most expensive 
character. 



The Tool-hoiLse. 153 

One or two of the plates to the French Gar- 
dener (1675) exhibit the systems of walled 
enclosures and parterres, which still survive 
in many places, and the walls are trellised 
for fruit-trees or vines. But the art of nail- 
ing up the branches with shreds appears to 
have found its way among the horticulturists 
in the succeeding century. 

The bygone gardener had at first a very 
narrow assortment of tools. The vocabula- 
ries mention, so far as I can see, only an 
axe, a grafting-knife, a spade, and a pruning- 
hook. 

But later onward — in the Tudor time — he 
was much better provided, or at all events 
our information as to his implements grows 
ampler. We hear of a barrow, a mattock, a 
spade, a shovel, a short and a long rake, and 
two kinds of fork, one called in the vocabu- 
laries z.furca, the other a merga. 

But the conduct of horticultural opera- 
tions, however imperfect according to modern 
ideas, involved the employment of many 
other appliances, which at once suggest 
themselves to the mind, and of which 



154 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

we possess no actual record at first, because 
they did not fall within the scheme of the 
makers of the No77iinale and the Glossary^ 
and had become too established and familiar 
to attract special attention, when the earliest 
writers on the garden appeared. 

It is only in a casual way that our acquaint- 
ance with the contents of the Anglo-Saxon 
or later English tool-house comes to us. Such 
men as Evelyn and Worlidge did not dream 
that we should like to have been informed, not 
merely of the seasons and modes of planting 
and pruning, and of the trees and plants 
which our ancestors cherished and handed 
down to us, but likewise that we should 
care to have had it in our power to contrast 
with the present facilities for managing a 
garden those which prior generations en- 
joyed. 

A pruning-hook is seen in the hand of one 
of the figures in the plate illustrating April 
in Stevenson's Twelve Moneths (1626-61). 
In the same engraving a woman holds a 
primitive watering-pot. Stevenson, under 
June, judiciously remarks : — 



I 



Espaliers and Pruning. 155 

" Take heed of cutting Trees, Hedges,'or Herbs with 
a knife, but rather gather them with your Finger." 

But the truth is that the graphic portion of 
the volume is merely a series of foreign 
prints, Dutch or German, utilised to lend 
an additional attraction to the English publi- 
cation, though it is at the same time likely 
enough that our own implements and those 
of Germany and Holland were almost identi- 
cal ; and in fact, not merely the illustrations, 
but the text of Stevenson, are largely borrowed 
from Breton's Fantastics (1626). 

From a fifteenth-century MS. of Bartholo- 
meus De Proprietatibus Rerum, it is inferable 
that some system was known and employed 
of training fruit-trees in the espalier mode 
now so familiar ; it was a word derived from 
the old French espaule. 

A very fair general notion of the policy 
and taste of our ancestors, a couple of cen- 
turies since, in laying out their grounds 
and gardens, according to their respective 
means, is derivable from such works as Les 
Delices de la Grande Bretagne, and from the 
illustrations to some of the treatises on 



156 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

gardening. Incidentally we come across 
helpful light of this sort in books not speci- 
ally dedicated to horticulture, as in two or 
three of the plates to Kennett's Parochial 
Antiquities (1695), where there are views, very 
serviceable for the immediate purpose, of 
Borstall manor house, of Mr. John Coker's 
residence, of Robert South's Manse at 
Islip, and of Sir John Walter's seat at 
Saresden, all in Oxfordshire. In these repre- 
sentations the details are furnished with a 
fidelity and minuteness for which one ought 
to be grateful, as it puts us in possession of 
the manner in which the men of the end 
of the seventeenth century arranged their 
borders and walks, of the aspect of their 
demesnes and frontages, and of the course 
which they pursued in walling or paling the 
space round their houses. All these interest- 
ing points are more lucidly worked out in the 
engravings to Kennett than in others, where 
little more than a ground-plan is visible, as 
in the/ardin de Wilton by Isaac de Caus, 
for instance. 

I do not find in our own early literature 



Forest Trees. 157 

any data for forming an opinion as to the 
method of pruning pursued in former times 
here ; and it is fairly questionable whether 
our ancestors bestowed much attention on 
the matter, as it remains one of which com- 
paratively few gardeners possess a competent 
knowledge. 

In the time of George III. William 
Forsyth enjoyed a good share of royal 
patronage and favour, and was appointed 
to the charge of the gardens at Kensington. 
He seems to have been an intelligent man, 
and to have devoted attention to the very 
important subject of pruning fruit-trees. He 
also made an attempt to provide a remedy 
for that serious evil, the canker, for the cure 
of which he invented some composition, but 
which is, however, still among the problems 
to be solved in arboriculture. Some trees, 
such as the Ribstone pippin, seem to be 
peculiarly prone to this malady. 

He published his book on gardening in 
1802, under the title of A Treatise on the 
Ma7i<igemeiit and Culture of Fruit- Trees ; 
there is an edition as late as 1824, with a 



158 Gleafiings in Old Garden Literature. 

portrait of the author ; and it has been 
translated into French. 

The willow is mentioned in the fourteenth 
century treatise of Walter de Biblesworth ; 
but it is not the willow of our meadows and 
gardens, which was not introduced till a 
much later period. It is, in fact, the common 
withy. 

Among the additions to our stock of forest- 
trees in Worlidge's time (1677) was the 
Horse-Chestnut. 

*' The tree," he narrates, "is very lately made 
English, being brought in its seed or Nuts from Con- 
stantinople ; it prospers very well here in good light 
mold ; its buds all the winter, and until it springs, are 
covered with a shining, glutinous matter or gum, and 
about the beginning of May it usually makes its whole 
year's shoot in eight or ten days." f 

The sweet or true chestnut is of older 
naturalisation here, and with the ' ash has 
been long used, specially grown in coppices, 
for hop-poles. The visitor to Cowdray Park, 
near Midhurst, in Sussex, should note the 
fine avenue of Spanish chestnuts. But this 
variety is very common in all parts of England. 
It is only one of many edible sorts. 



Forest Trees. 159 

The subject of Forest-trees brings us to a 
thought of those venerable contemporaries of 
so many generations, some of the ancient 
tenants of our parks and chases, which have 
seen race supplant race, dynasty succeed to 
dynasty ; veterans which form a link almost 
between the Anglo-Saxons and ourselves. If 
the Talking Oak of Tennyson had been of this 
group, what might it not have told us of our 
national story beyond the possibihties of pen 
and ink ! I refer with much pleasure to the 
paper by Mr. Brailsford ** On Some Ancient 
Trees," in the tenth volume of the Antiquary. 

Mr. Joseph Lucas, in his valuable Studies 
in Nidderdale, remarks : — 

" Nidderdale and its moors have formerly been 
covered by an extensive forest. Many trees lie buried 
in the peat upon the moors. In the thousands of 
sections made by little water-courses the birch appears 
almost everywhere predominant. Hazel, ' sealh 
[sallow],' thorn, oaks, etc., also occur; but the birch 
must have formed a thick and almost universal forest 
by itself, such as may be seen on the west coast of 
Norway at the present day. " 

This graceful tree is extraordinarily hardy. 
Among the Alps it flourishes in rocky ground 



i6o Gleanin5:s in Old Garden Literature. 



'<b 



with scarcely any apparent soil to nourish 
and support its roots. 

Mr. Lucas adds a table of the various 
trees of which remains are traceable in the 
peat. 

The nature of mosses was beginning to 
be better understood in Charles II.'s day, 
and the invention of the microscope 
enabled the student to arrive at a more 
accurate knowledge of the plant and its 
mode of reproduction. It is interesting to 
find that the uses of science were in this case 
so promptly applied to practical purposes. 
Hooke had published his Micrographia in 
1667, and therein foreshadowed the 
telephone. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Flora — The Tulip, the Rose, the 
Jessamine — Abercromby's Works. 




N Alfric's tenth-century vocabulary, 
under the Names of Trees, we 
have various kinds of oak, two 
sorts of hazel, the nut, the beech, the laurel, 
the apple (probably a crab), the pear, the 
medlar, the pine, the yew, the plum, the fig, the 
palm, the fir, the elm, the broom, the maple, 
the poplar, the heath, and many others. The 
list is extremely curious, and from the absence 
of any attempt at classification we may be 
entitled to form some idea of the want of any 
settled principles for laying out shrubberies, 
plantations, and gardens. It is much the same 
in the passage where Johannes de Garlandia 
is communicating to us what grew in his own 
grounds ; he adds, by the way, the vines, the 

II 



1 62 Gleanings in Old Gaj^den Literature. 



"it 



chestnut, and others. The plum mentioned 
above was apparently not the sloe, as the 
latter also occurs lower down in the catalogue ; 
the palm was, of course, the common plant 
which is popularly so christened, and does 
duty for the real kind ; and the pear, like the 
plum, must have been at this time very im- 
perfectly cultivated here. It may be added 
that in the two eleventh-century vocabularies 
there are other plants and herbs, such as 
mint, white clover, fern, foxglove, two or 
three sorts of thistle, and mugwort, and 
among trees box and ash. But as regards 
many of the names the compiler seems not 
unfrequently to have had confused and 
erroneous notions of the Saxon equivalents 
for the Latin denominations. The virtues of 
mint were understood very early ; it is said 
that in the time of Edward I. it was in vogue 
as a condiment, much in the same way that 
it is now, under the name of aigre-doiice. 

The anonymous vocabulary of the succeed- 
ing century adds sothern-wood, the rose, 
the peony, linseed, gorse, the nettle, the 
knee-holly, and many others, sufficient to 



Flora. 163 

shew that our Saxon ancestors were abund- 
antly supplied in, or not much later than, the 
age of Alfred with the means of forming 
gardens and ornamental enclosures, and with 
material for the distillery and the surgery. 

We may also judge that at this distant 
time our moors and commons were already 
clothed with that exquisite and brilliant 
gorse which is yet so luxuriant among us, 
but, singularly enough, unknown in climates 
similar to our own. What accident or 
agency brought it hither? What prevented 
it from making other northerly regions 
sharers with ourselves in its unique nature 
and beauty ? 

The story of the great Swedish naturalist, 
when he visited England and beheld the 
bush for the first time, is too familiar for 
repetition. 

Even in the list of trees which we find in 
the fourteenth century treatise of Walter de 
Biblesworth the various kinds are mingled 
together without any effort to discriminate ; 
the apple, pear, cherry, ash, broom, plum, 
and hawthorn occur in consecutive order ; 



1 64 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

and as they are connected, so probably they 
grew in the gardens of our forefathers. 

Among the flora of the fifteenth century 
occur the lily, the water-lily (of two varieties), 
the cowslip, the poppy, the pimpernel, the 
violet, the primrose, the wild thyme of Shake- 
speare, the columbine, and many more — 
some disguised by obscure and obsolete desig- 
nations. 

In Worlidge's work the tulip engrosses a 
section. He places it at the head of the 
Bulbs, and says that there was then (1677) 
so great a variety that they were not to be 
enumerated. 

"Nor is it," he continues, "all the words I can 
invent can convince you of the beauty of these 
Glories of Nature, but must refer you to the choice 
your self or friend for you can make out of that 
Magazine of varieties that are collected for the 
ingenious Florist." 

This is historically interesting ; and it seems 
to denote that our supply was imported from 
Holland, and that our own dealers were 
only agents. Worlidge does not allude to 
any extraordinary enthusiasm for the bulbs, 



The Ttdip^ Rose^ and Jessamine. 165 

nor does he particularise the rare black sort. 
Brilliancy of hue, on the contrary, he 
commends, and suggests when the flower 
discovers a tendency toward a sadder colour, 
that it should be taken up just before the 
flowering season and laid in the sun. 

He describes the Persian and Indian 
jessamines, the Spanish broom, by which he 
means the cultivated yellow variety, and the 
double flowering peach and cherry ; and 
among bedding or bordering and other plants, 
the lily, the hyacinth, the anemone, the lily 
of the valley, auriculas, primroses, cowslips. 
The Indian Jucca (or Yucca) he also men- 
tions ; and his pages clearly demonstrate the 
rapid development which maritime discovery 
and horticultural enterprise had imparted to 
the British Flora and Sylva in the second 
moiety of the seventeenth century. 

The example and encouragement of men 
like Evelyn in his day, and Worlidge in his, 
contributed to the formation of a public 
taste, which in the succeeding generations 
received further expansion and refinement 
at the hands of the friends and contem- 



1 66 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature, 



'i> 



poraries of Pope ; and, later again, of those 
who directed these matters for George III. 
and his surrounders. 

Worlidge considered that the rose should 
be placed between the tulip and the gilly- 
flower, and he preferred the yellow Provence 
rose. How the latter was obtained he thus 
explains : — 

"It hath been obtained by budding a single yellow 
rose to the stock of a flourishing Frankfort rose, near 
the ground ; when that single yellow is well grown in 
that branch, inoculate your double yellow rose ; then 
cut off all suckers and shoots from the first and second, 
leaving only your last, which must be pruned very near, 
leaving but few buds. ..." 

He furnishes us with a long catalogue of 
roses then grown, and adds the Gelder-rose, 
which he not improbably supposes to be a 
corruption of Elder-rose, from the resem- 
blance of the foliage to that of the so- 
named tree. 

The Provence rose seems to have been 
sufficiently familiar in Shakespeare's time to 
have been worn as an article of ornament, 
for in Hamlet^ iv., 2, the Prince of Denmark 



Abercrombies Works. 167 

speaks of a man likely to get admission into 
a cry of players as wearing two Provenc^al 
roses in his slashed shoes. 

Abercrombie's work, Every Man his own 
Gardener (1766), had a very lengthened run, 
and was no doubt deserving of the popularity 
which it so long enjoyed. Although it did 
not appear till the latter half of the eighteenth 
century, it represented the experience of a 
man who must have recollected Pope and 
the traditions of 1688. I have before me 
an edition printed in 1827, in which it is said 
to be " by Thomas Mawe, Gardener to His 
Grace the Duke of Leeds, and John Aber- 
crombie, sixty years a Practical Gardener," 
and now to be " Enlarged and Improved 
by R. Forsyth." This I take to be the son 
of the Forsyth who was so much patronised 
by George III. 

In 1784 Abercrombie followed up Every 
Man his own Gardener by an even more 
important work : — The Propagation and 
Botanical Arra?igement of Plants and Trees, 
Useful and Ornamental, Proper for Cultiva- 
tion in every Department of Gardening ; Nur- 



1 68 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



"£> 



series^ Plantations, and Agriculture. . . . 
2 vols, small octavo. The title, which is 
a sort of Table of Contents, is followed by 
a Preface, dated from 319, Oxford Street, 
London, in which the author claims credit 
for his work as *' a truly original performance, 
upon a plan never before attempted." The 
First portion is devoted to directions for 
propagation, pruning, etc., on a more copious 
scale than former works ; the Second con- 
tains the botanical classification and nomen- 
clature. We see what rapid progress had 
been made, when these volumes appeared, 
in the acclimatisation of exotics and enrich- 
ment of our gardens with the hardier varieties 
of Asiatic and American plants and shrubs. 




XIV. 




Market Gardens in the Suburbs of 
London — Testimony of an Italian 
Visitor in '1614 — Nurseries and 
Grounds at Old Brompton, Fulham, 
Battersea, and Deptford. 

N Italian, named Giacomo Castel- 
vetri, who was in London in 16 14, 
wrote a species of Herbal, still 
in MS. in the British Museum among 
the books of Sir Joseph Banks, in which 
he introduces us to a knowledge, which 
we should not '^otherwise have possessed, of 
the condition^' of market gardening near 
London in the reign of James I. He 
does not tell us much ; but what informa- 
tion he supplies is especially valuable. 
The asparagus, he says, was very small 
and very dear in London, its culture not 



I/O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

being well understood; he expresses his 
surprise that it was not cultivated to a 
greater extent, since an acre of asparagus 
would, in a short time, yield more profit 
than ten acres sown with corn. Artichokes 
in England, he observes, lasted the greatest 
part of the year, much longer than in Italy. 
Cucumbers were then eaten when they were 
big and yellow, in England ; in Italy they 
ate them when small and green. The 
English had two plentiful crops of straw- 
berries, the first in the middle of June, 
the second in October. 

As regards asparagus, the English did not 
neglect the suggestion that it might be 
advantageously grown in the vicinity of a 
profitable market. A fair quantity is still 
cultivated at Mortlake. Since Bacon's time, 
the strain of the strawberry had no doubt 
improved; but I hardly understand what 
Castelvetri intends by a second crop in 
October. The first is now seldom ready in 
the open air before July, except in very 
sheltered localities ; but October sorts are 
unknown. 



Nurseries and Grounds at Brompton. 171 

Lysons, writing in 1795, ^^.ys that the 
nursery at Brompton Park, established by 
Messrs. London and Wise, gardeners to 
William III. and Queen Anne, dated from 
about the latter end of the seventeenth 
century. And Evelyn records in his Diary 
his visit to it with his friend Mr. Waller 
(not the poet) in 1694. He was there 
again in 1701. ^'' 27id of September. — I went 
to Kensington, and saw the lawn, planta- 
tions, and gardens, the work of Mr. Wise, 
who was there to receive me." The grounds 
lay between Brompton and Kensington ; 
from Evelyn mentioning only Wise, it 
is presumable that he had lost his part- 
ner, Mr. London. The stock of plants 
here in 1700 is represented by a contem- 
porary as so large that they would have 
been worth ^^40,000 at a penny a-piece. 
This place belonged, when Lysons wrote, 
to Messrs. Gray and Wear, and the Grays 
were still there in 1840. The present 
writer recollects their grounds, as well as 
several others. 

George London seems to have quitted the 



172 Gleanings in Old Gai'den Literature. 

metropolis whose name he bore, and to 
have settled in Nottinghamshire, where he 
had something to do with the gardens of 
Count Tallard, in the vicinity of Nottingham. 
He gave to the world, as a sort of farewell 
memorial of a long and useful professional 
career, The Retird Gardiner, with the 
Ma7iner of Planting and CiUtivating all Sorts 
of Flowers for beautifying Country Seats 
(1706^ 2 vols., small octavo). The book was 
accompanied by a description and plan of 
Count Tallard's gardens, and by a series of 
plates and woodcuts. 

Possibly London was related to William 
London, of Newcastle, a bookseller, who 
settled in the metropolis, and published two 
well-known catalogues, which some of the 
old bibliographers imagined to have been 
the work of Bishop Juxon, because that 
prelate signed himself William London. 

I have spoken of London and Wise with 
appreciative respect, because in relation to 
the prevailing taste they held an honourable 
position, and according to their training, and 
the fashion in such matters which they found 



London and Wise. 173 

current, did their part. But, as we shall see, 
not merely did those florists belong to a bad 
school, but they must be said to have 
contributed by their influence and advice 
to exaggerate the errors and barbarisms 
of it. 

In common with the leading members of 
every profession, this great firm had much 
in its hands for good or the contrary, and 
that it had not the genius to detect the 
falsity of the principles, in which it had been 
brought up, we ought not to be astonished 
or offended, inasmuch as those principles 
came to them with the weighty sanction of 
the most distinguished men of the century. 
In a condemnation of London and Wise 
we involve a condemnation of Evelyn. 

The passion for seeking in the statuary's 
yard decorations for the garden had found 
its way, like so many other equivocal 
blessings, from a country where the line 
between the sculptor and the stonemason 
was more defined, and where the climate 
made marble work interspersed with foliage 
more easily endured. 



174 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

But it was to the Hollanders that London 
and his partner were indebted for that 
preposterous plan of deforming Nature by- 
making her statuesque, and reducing her 
irregular and luxuriant lines to a dead and 
prosaic level through the medium of the 
shears. Gods, animals, and other objects were 
no longer carved out of stone ; but the trees, 
shrubs, and hedges were made to do double 
service as a body of verdure and a sculpture- 
gallery. The free growth of the box, the 
yew, and the holly was sacrificed to the 
mania for the quaint and grotesque in art, 
and from the occasional survivals of this 
bastard style one gets some imperfect con- 
ception of what it must have been, when 
it was in its full glory. 

As far back as 17 15, the founder of 
Lee's Nursery at Kensington came up to 
London, and acquired extensive grounds 
adjacent to the Holland House estate; it 
was a flourishing concern during the whole 
of the last century and the first half of this ; 
the firm grudged no labour or expense in 
obtaining the rarest plants, trees, and 



Curtis s Botanical Garden. 175 

flowers from every part of the world ; but 
the greater portion of the nursery is now 
covered by buildings. 

Curtis's Botanical Garden, which had 
been in Lambeth Marsh, was removed to 
the north side of the Fulham Road, near 
the Queen's Elm, about 1789. The proprie- 
tors published an annual catalogue, and 
there was a botanical library ; subscribers of 
a guinea a year were entitled to admission 
to the gardens for self and friend, and 
a payment of two guineas gave an un- 
limited right of entry and a certain quantity 
of seeds, roots, etc. The space occupied by 
this business remained open within my recol- 
lection, and under other management was 
devoted to similar objects, though not on 
the same ambitious scale. 

Besides the nurseries instituted by London 
and Wise, and by Curtis or his successors, 
there were others kept in the first half of 
this century by Rigby, Siggers, Conway, and 
Kirke in the same neighbourhood. There 
was another on part of the site of the South 
Kensington Museum and Brompton Oratory, 



1/6 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter attire. 

between Pollard's School and Ingestry 
House. Kirke's ground was contiguous 
to that of Hale or Cromwell House, and 
Kirke used to point out an ancient gateway- 
communicating with the latter, through 
which he was fond of telling visitors 
that Cromwell used to pass on his way 
to London, the site of the nursery in 
his time being, according to tradition, 
used as an exercise ground for his body- 
guard. Those whose associations connect 
them with other outlying portions of the 
metropolis, when it was still a city encom- 
passed by villages, as mine do me with Old 
Brompton, will readily call to mind similar 
spots in the north, south, and east of 
London, now no more. But I may mention 
Middlemist's Cape Nursery at Shepherd's 
Bush, where many novelties from the North 
African Jlora were exhibited, the proprietor 
having resided there during many years ; and 
the Arboretum at Paddington, to which it is 
said that the earliest consignment was made, at 
the end of the last century, of the American 
vegetable marrow, — at least, of our variety of 



Nurseries at Battersea, Fulkam, etc. 177 

it, for there are many which our climate 
does not suit. Other sorts have since been 
introduced, including a bush marrow and a 
small prickly kind, which used to be grown 
at Sion House, Isleworth ; but the finer and 
more delicate species, like some descriptions 
of American fruit, more especially that which 
grows in the subtropical parts, are scarcely 
known. 

At the end of the last century no fewer 
than one hundred and forty acres of land 
at Bethnal Green were held by market 
gardeners. 

Battersea, as well as Fulham and Old 
Brompton, was a favourite resort of the 
calling. Lysons, writing in 1792, when the 
aspect of this and other suburban neighbour- 
hoods had been scarcely altered, says : — 

" About three hundred acres of land in the parish 
of Battersea are occupied by the market gardeners, of 
whom there are about twenty who rent from five to 
six to near sixty acres each. . . . The soil of the 
ground occupied by the gardeners is sandy, and re- 
quires a great deal of rain. The vegetables which 
they raise are, in general, very fine ; their cabbages 
and asparagus, particularly, have acquired celebrity. 

£2 



1/8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

Fuller, who wrote in the year 1660, speaking of the 
gardens in Surrey, says, ' Gardening was first brought 
into England for profit about seventy years ago, before 
which we fetched most of our cherries from Holland, 
apples from France, and had hardly a mess of rath 
(early) ripe peas but from Holland, which were 
dainties for ladies, they came so far, and cost so dear. 
Since gardening hath crept out of Holland to Sand- 
wich, Kent, and thence to Surrey, where, though they 
have given ;^6 an acre and upwards, they have made 
their rent, lived comfortably, and set many people on 
work. Oh, the incredible profit by digging of ground ! 
for though it be confessed, that the plough beats the 
spade out of distance for speed (almost as much as the 
press beats the pen), yet what the spade wants in- 
the quantity of ground it manureth, it recompenseth 
with the plenty of the food it yieldeth, that which is 
set multiplying abundant-fold more than that which 
is sown. 'Tis incredible how many poor people in 
London live thereon, so that, in some fashion, the 
gardens feed more people than the field.' " 

This extract is very pertinent at the 
present moment, when we are agitating the 
expediency of reconverting into pasture the 
unprofitable plough-land. A chronological 
catalogue of political grievances might prove 
curious ; but it is at any rate remarkable 
that complaint was formerly made, when 



Market Gardens. 179 

arable was applied to grazing purposes. The 
subject is one which has always possessed 
great interest ; but it is now invested with 
a new and special importance, and I am 
tempted to transcribe from Lysons some 
farther remarks on the state of market gar- 
dens near the metropolis in old times, and 
at the period when he wrote (1792). After 
stating that the culture of vegetables for sale 
commenced about 1590, he proceeds : — 

" In some bills of fare for dinners in 1373, I find 
several charges for parsley, sorrel, and strong herbs, 
and one charge of \2d. for two dishes of buttered 
peason on the ist of July, which, supposing the value 
of money to have been then four times greater, would 
now at that season purchase about eight pecks." [He 
then repeats what Fuller says above about early peas.] 
'*What they cost in his time he [Fuller] does not 
inform us ; the usual price now, at their first coming, 
is from about five shillings to half a guinea a pottle, 
afterwards from ten to fifteen shillings the half- 
sive. . . . 

" Gardens for the raising of vegetables for sale 
were first cultivated about Sandwich, in Kent. The 
example was soon followed near the metropolis, whose 
markets are the chief vent for this produce. In pro- 
portion as this great town has increased in population 
and opulence, the demand for every species of garden 



1 8o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

luxury has increased also ; and from time to time 
fields have in consequence been converted into 
garden-ground, till a considerable proportion of the 
land within a few miles of London became occupied 
for that purpose. The culture of garden-ground is 
principally confined to those parishes which lie within 
a moderate distance of the river, on account of the 
convenience of water carriage for manure, which 
since the prodigious increase of carriages, as well 
of hackney and stage coaches, as of those kept by 
private families, is procured in great abundance from 
the London stables, 

" By a general calculation, founded upon inquiries 
made in each parish, it appears that there are about 
five thousand acres within twelve miles of the 
metropolis constantly cultivated for the supply of 
the London markets with garden vegetables, exclusive 
of about eight hundred acres cropped with fruit of 
various kinds, and about 1,700 acres cultivated for 
potatoes. Besides which there are perhaps 1,200 
acres cropped with various garden vegetables for the 
food of cattle, principally cows. This culture is 
carried on most extensively in the parishes of 
Camberwell and Deptford St. Paul's, by persons who 
are called farming gardeners. Their method is to 
manure their land to the highest pitch of cultivation 
for garden crops, both for the market and for cattle, 
after a succession of which they refresh it by sowing 
it with corn. 

" In the parish of Fulham the cultivation of gardens 



Nurseries at Fulham^ Deptford, etc. 1 8 1 

for the market is carried on to a greater extent than 
in any other in the kingdom. The quantity occupied 
by market-gardeners only is about eight hundred 
acres, to which may be added nearly two hundred 
more, cultivated for the market by farming gardeners. 

"The cultivation of asparagus is carried on to the 
greatest extent in the parishes of Deptford St. Paul's, 
Chiswick, Battersea, and Mortlake, there being about 
1 80 acres of it in the four parishes, of which about 
seventy are in Mortlake, which may be said to pro- 
duce a greater quantity of that vegetable than any 
parish in England. 

' ' Deptford is famous also for the culture of onions 
for seed, of which there are on an average about 
twenty acres. About ten acres are cultivated for this 
purpose in the parishes of Mortlake and Barnes. . . . 

" The average rent of garden-ground, in most of 
the parishes near London, is now £/^ per acre." 



XV. 

Sir William Temple — Walpole and the 
Gardeners of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury.* 




BOUT midway between Bacon and 
the horticultural amateurs or pro- 
fessors of the Georgian period, 
there is Sir William Temple, whose fine 
gardens at Sheen, already noticed in a 
cursory way, occupied a leading rank among 
the private grounds in the vicinity of London, 
and derived an enhanced interest from the 

* Essay on Modern Gardening, by Mr. Horace 
Walpole [1770] ; Essai stir I' Art des Jar dins 
Modernes, par M. Horace Walpole. Traduit en 
Fran9ois par M. Le Due de Nivernois, en 
MDCCLXXXIV. Imprime a Strawberry Hill, par 
T. Kirgate, MDCCLXXXV ; 4to, pp. 94, and a leaf 
with the first title. With the English and French 
texts on opposite sides. 



Sir William Temple. 183 

personal prestige of their owner, whom 
we remember at present through them and 
his associations with WiUiam III. and 
Swift. 

It is fortunate for us that Temple, besides 
being a politician and a practical horticul- 
turist, possessed literary tastes, and thought 
proper to insert among his essays one which 
he entitles '' Upon the Gardens of Epicurus ; 
or, Of Gardening in the year 1685." 

The heading of the paper is rather apt to 
mislead us till we look through the pages 
which are occupied with it, and find that it 
commences with an account of the Gardens 
of the Ancients, and then proceeds to the 
end with one of the state of gardening and 
fruit-culture, especially at Sheen, as it stood 
at the close of the reign of Charles II. 

I cannot say that the former or introduc- 
tory portion has anything approaching to the 
attractive influence which I feel in perus- 
ing, at a distance of two centuries, the 
opinions and experiences of so distinguished 
a personage on a topic so enduringly 
fascinating and important. I have not room 



184 Gleanings iri Old Garden Literature. 

for much in the way of extract, but let me 
copy out a paragraph or so, where he begins 
to speak of his own country and his own 
seat : — 

*' But after so much Ramble into Ancient Times, 
and Remote Places, to return Home and consider 
the present Way and Humour of our Gardening in 
England, which seem to have grown into such Vogue, 
and to have been so mightily improved in Three or 
Four and Twenty Years of His Majesty's reign, that 
perhaps few Countries are before us ; either in the 
Elegance of our Gardens, or in the number of our 
Plants ; and I believe none equals us in the Variety 
of Fruits, which may be justly called good ; and from 
the earliest Cherry and Strawberry, to the last Apples 
and Pears, may furnish every Day of the circling 
Year. For the Taste and Perfection of what we 
esteem the best, I may truly say, that the French, 
who have eaten my Peaches and Grapes at Skene, in 
no very 111 year, have generally concluded, that the 
best are as good as any they have eaten in France, 
on this side Fountainhleau ; and the first as good 
as any they have eat in Gascony ; I mean those 
which came from the Stone, and are properly called 
Peaches, not those which are hard, and are termed 
Pavies ; . . . . Italians have agreed, my "White Figs 
to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is 
the earlier kind of White Fig there ; for in the latter 
[later] kind, and the Blue, we cannot come near the 



Sir William Temple. 185 

warm Climates, no more than in the Frontignac or 
Muscat Grape. 

"My Orange-Trees are as large as any I saw when 
I was young in France, except those oi Fountainbleau, 
or what I have seen since in the Low Coimtries .... 
"When I was at Coseiuelt with that Bishop of Munster, 
that made so much Noise in his time, I observed no 
other Trees but Cherries in a great Garden he had 
made. He told me the Reason was, because he found 
no other Fruit would ripen well in that Climate, or 
upon that Soil ; and therefore instead of being curious 
in others, he had only been so in the Sorts of that, 
whereof he had so many, as never to be without them 
from May to the end of September.''^ 

He goes on to discuss the size and shape 
of gardens, the best descriptions of grapes, 
plums, and other fruit, the careful appropria- 
tion of walls, and the choice of soil. He 
seems to have contributed personally to 
extend the resources of English gardens and 
greenhouses. He particularly informs us that 
he imported from various parts of France 
four new sorts of grape : the Arboyse, the 
Burgundy, the Black Muscat, and the 
GrizzeHn Frontignac. Of the three kinds 
of fig, he preferred the white, of which there 
were two varieties. The Tawny, he tells 



1 86 Gleanino;s in Old Garden Literahire, 



%i> 



us, " is very small, bears ill, and I think 
but a Bawble." 

Of the gardens of his contemporaries he 
has not anything to say, except (and the 
exception is worth a good deal) that of the 
Countess of Bedford at Moor Park, in 
Hertfordshire, on which he dilates, from early 
and affectionate recollection, with evident 
zest. 

"The perfectest Figure of a Garden I ever saw, 
either at Home or Abroad, was that of Moor-Park 
in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about Thirty Years 
ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, 
esteemed among the greatest Wits of her time, and 
celebrated by Doctor Donne." 

A minute picture of Moor Park follows; 
and Temple takes occasion to remark that, 
as regards gardens in general, the form to be 
preferred is, in his opinion, an oblong on a 
slope. 

Separated from the great philosopher of the 
age of Elizabeth and James I. by an interval 
of about a century and a half, Horace 
Walpole, better known to the generality of 



Horace Walpole. 187 

readers as a writer of Memoirs and Letters, 
presents himself to our notice as an authority 
on the present subject, but as an authority 
not less different in value from Bacon than 
the characters and intellects of the two men 
differed. In fact, when we look at the 
lapse of time between them, it dwindles into 
secondary consequence before the immense 
disparity and contrast between Elizabeth's 
" young Lord Keeper " and the master of 
Strawberry Hill. Both were men of genius ; 
but their gifts were of a totally different order. 
Bacon could not have written Walpole's 
Letters, nor could Walpole have given us 
the Novum Orga7ium. Nay, he could not 
have produced the Sylva Sylvarum. 

Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening was 
finished in 1770, but was not printed till 
1785, when it came from the Strawberry Hill 
press with a French translation by the Due 
de Nivernois. We have only to turn over 
the pages of this production to arrive at 
the conclusion that the author, if we had 
happened to possess no independent or 
collateral knowledge of him, was a member 



1 88 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

of the fashionable world and a gentleman of 
fortune. He tells us, after a brief proem 
about the garden of Eden, the Homeric 
legend of Alcinous, and the mural records 
of Herculaneum, all about his rich and dis- 
tinguished relatives and friends, and tells us 
as delightfully as he does elsewhere in his 
inimitable correspondence. 

But Bacon was also nobly born, and had 
also high and powerful connections. He 
was Lord Chancellor of England under 
James L, and his father had kept the seals 
under Elizabeth. If Walpole had Straw- 
berry Hill and Arlington Street, his prede- 
cessor had Gorhambury and Bacon House. 
The author of Sylva Sylvarimi at least 
equalled the Earl ofOrford in social influence 
and surroundings, and when one recollects 
that Bacon divided with Shakespeare the 
literary glory of the Elizabethan era, and 
that no such two had before, or have since, 
appeared in England or in the world, it is a 
piece of supererogation to say that in intellec- 
tual force Bacon and Walpole were not for 
an instant comparable. 



Horace Walpole. 189 

These pages have to do with a very frac- 
tional portion of the labours of either. But 
one has only to turn from the Section where 
I afforded some select specimens of the 
Sylva Sylvarmn, to the present, where I deal 
with Walpole, to see at a glance how 
differently the earlier and later writer set 
about their work. The whole thought of 
Bacon was of his subject and of the best 
mode of rendering his experiments ser- 
viceable and his meaning clear. In the 
book of which I am now going to give a 
short account, there seems throughout to 
be an anxiety to crowd into his canvas (as 
it were) glimpses of the country seats of all 
the great ladies and gentlemen who had 
the good fortune to be known by him. 
It almost sounds in our ears like a 
concession, where he places a person of 
quality like Sir William Temple below 
Milton ; but it is hard to resist a smile 
where he tells us that — 

" the description of Eden [by Milton] is a warmer 
or more just picture of the present style than Claud 
Lorrain could have painted from Hagley or Stour- 



190 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

head. The first lines . , . exhibit Stourhead on a 
more magnificent scale." 

Of course, it is obvious enough that the 
poet, in depicting Eden, borrowed his notion 
of it from the gardens of England in his 
own age ; but I merely adduced this com- 
parison as a trait which pervades the Straw- 
berry Hill essay. Walpole never wrote many 
lines without letting everybody know that 
he was a man of birth and fashion, and, 
to boot, of genius. 

Walpole's essay is, nevertheless, very read- 
able, very intelligent, and very instructive. 
By way of variety, no one can be displeased 
to have a better notion of it than there is, 
I somehow fancy, at present. With the in- 
troductory sketch we can dispense. Its 
chief value and interest centre in the re- 
marks which the writer has left upon the 
gardens and gardening of his own day. In 
the opinions and ideas which prevailed in 
Bacon's time on horticulture, the manage- 
ment of flowers, and the arrangement of 
ornamental grounds, the intervening years 
had wrought momentous changes. The 



Horace Walpole. 191 

Dutch and Italian influences had operated, 
and, on the whole, no doubt, benefici- 
ally, on English taste, and had enlarged 
the resources as well as the views of our 
countrymen. 

Walpole very properly condemns, as Pope 
had already ridiculed in verse, the insipid 
geometrical style of laying out grounds, 
which prevailed, till a reform in such matters 
was accomplished by Bridgman, Kent, Capa- 
bility Brown, and others, in the second half 
of the last century. 

" The compass and square," says the Essay, "were 
of more use in plantation than the nursery-man. 
The measured walk, the quincunx, and the etoile 
imposed their unsatisfying sceneries on our royal and 
noble gardens. Trees were headed, and their sides 
pared away ; many French groves seem green chests 
set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and 
summer houses terminated every vista, and symmetry, 
even where the space was too large to permit its being 
remarked at one view, was an essential that, as Pope 
observed — 

' . . . Each alley has a brother, 
And half the garden just reflects the other.' 

Knots of flowers were more defensibly subjected to 



192 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

the same regularity. 'Leisure,' as Milton expressed 
it,— 

' . . . In trim gardens took his pleasure. ' 

In the garden of Marshal de Biron at Paris, con- 
sisting of fourteen acres, every walk is buttoned on 
each side by lines of flower-pots, which succeed in 
their seasons. When I saw it, there were nine 
thousand pots of Asters, or La Reine Marguerite.''' 

Walpole pays a high tribute to the picture 
which Milton draws in the Paradise Lost of 
the Garden of Eden ; but, as I have stated, 
he detects in it a resemblance to the gardens 
at Hagley and Stourhead, and even suspects 
that the blind bard had in his recollection 
the beauties of Theobalds and Nonsuch. 
Although, however, Walpole does justice to 
Milton, he was not sorry, I believe, to pass 
from him to Sir William Temple. It was a 
more congenial atmosphere. Temple was 
only, it is true, " an excellent man ; " but he 
was a man nearer to Walpole's time, and 
nearer also to Walpole's heart. He quotes 
with enthusiasm his account of the garden 
at Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, designed 
under the eye of the Countess of Bedford, 



Horace Walpole. 193 

who befriended Donne and some of his 
literary contemporaries. 

It seems to the present writer that much 
of the improvement in the style of our 
gardens is to be found, in essence or sug- 
gestion, in the observations of Bacon, not 
in the Sylva, but in his essay on the subject^ 
contained in the volume of 1597. Of course, 
even when a few sensible men tried to super- 
sede the stiff, tasteless manner introduced 
from the Low Countries, there was far from 
being a general rally round them ; and Wal- 
pole himself remarks that many foreigners 
had seen our gardens, and still preferred their 
own artificial ingenuity. He instances Le 
Nautre, the contriver of the groves and 
grottoes at Versailles, who came over to us, 
and planted St. Ja^nes's and Greenwich parks 
— " no great monuments of his invention." 

Temple, after speaking of the regular and 
irregular forms of gardens, pronounces in 
favour of the former, on the ground of the 
difficulty and risk attendant on success. 

" I should hardly advise any of these attempts," he 
says, as cited by Walpole, "in the figure of gardens 



194 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature . 

among us ; they are adventures of too hard atchieve- 
ment for any common hands ; and, though there may 
be more honour if they succeed well, yet there is 
more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one 
they will ; whereas in regular figures it is hard to make 
any great and remarkable faults." 

" Fortunately," proceeds Walpole, " Kent and a 
few others were not quite so timid, or we might still 
be going up and down stairs in the open air." 

Referring to Temple's description of Moor 
Park, Herts, in Lady Bedford's time, he goes 
on to say : — 

" But as no succeeding generation in an opulent and 
luxurious country contents itself with the perfection 
established by its ancestors, more perfect perfection 
was still sought ; and improvements had gone on, till 
London and Wise had stocked our gardens with giants, 
animals, monsters, coats of arms, and mottoes, in yew, 
box, and holly. Absurdities could go no farther, and 
the tide turned. Bridgman, the next fashionable 
designer of gardens, was far more chaste ; and whether 
from good sense, or that the nation had been struck 
and reformed by the admirable paper in the Guardian^ 
No. 173, he banished verdant sculpture, and did not 
even revert to the square precision of the foregoing 
age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every 
division tally to its opposite, and though he adhered 
much to strait walks with high clipped hedges, they 



Horace Walpole. 195 

were only his great lines : the rest he diversified by 
wilderness and with loose groves of oak, though still 
within surrounding hedges." ' 

Here we have almost exactly what Bacon 
advises in 1597. On revient toujours a ses 
premieres amours ! 

Let us hear something more of Bridgman 
from Walpole :- — 

' ' I have observed in the garden at Gubbins, in 
Hertfordshire, many detached thoughts, that strongly 
indicate the dawn of modem taste. As his reforma- 
tion gained footing, he ventured farther, and in the 
royal garden at Richmond dared to introduce culti- 
vated fields, and even morsels of a forest appearance, 
by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks, that 
stretched out of one into another without intermission. 
But this was not till other innovators had broke loose 
too from rigid symmetry. 

" But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that 
has followed, was [I believe the first thought was 
Bridgman's] the destruction of walls for boundaries, 
and the invention of fosses — an attempt then deemed 
so astonishing that the common people called them 
Ha ! Ha ! to express their surprise at finding a sudden 
and unperceived check to their walks." 

Walpole's etymology, or explanation, is 



196 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

doubtful enough, and part of the improved 
scheme, for which he claims credit on behalf 
of Bridgman, had been shadowed out, and 
even more, by Bacon. 

"One of the first gardens planted in this simple, 
though still formal, style, was my father's, at Hough- 
ton," Walpole informs us. "It was laid out by Mr. 
Eyre, an imitator of Bridgman. " 

The latter artist was followed by Kent, a 
famous name in the annals of horticulture. 
Walpole characterises him as 

"painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, 
bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, 
and bom with a genius to strike out a great system 
from the twilight of imperfect essays. " " He leaped 
the fence," says our author, " and saw that all nature 
was a garden." 

From Walpole's account of Kent's peculiar 
bent of mind and cast of feeling, the con- 
clusion comes to us that he, partly, doubtless, 
owing to the lessons and suggestions which 
he derived from Bridgman, was the real father 
of the modern school of gardening, breaking 
so much more completely away from the old 



Horace Walpole. 197 

prejudices, and approaching so much nearer 
to ourselves than his predecessors. 

"The pencil of his imagination," writes his con- 
temporary of him, ** bestowed all the arts of land- 
scape on the scenes he handled. The great principles 
on which he worked were perspective, and light and 
shade. Groups of trees broke too uniform, or too 
extensive a lawn, evergreens and woods were opposed 
to the glare of the champain ; and where the view was 
less fortunate, or so exposed as to be beheld at once, 
he blotted out some parts by thick shades, to divide it 
into variety, or to make the richest scene more en- 
chanting by reserving it to a farther advance of the 
spectator's steps. . , . 

" But of all the beauties he added to the face of this 
beautiful country, none surpassed his management of 
water. . . . The gentle stream was taught to serpentine 
seemingly at its leisure ; and where discontinued by 
different levels, its course appeared to be concealed 
by thickets, properly interspersed, and glittered again 
at a distance, where it might be supposed naturally 
to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preserved 
their waving irregularity. A few trees scattered 
here and there on its edges sprinkled the tame bank 
that accompanied its meanders ; and when it disap- 
peared among the hills, shades descending from the 
heights leaned towards its progress, and framed the 
distant point of light under which it was lost, as it 
turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon." 



198 Gleanings in Old Garden Litei'ature. 

He thus portrays the artistic mode of deal- 
ing with ground too thickly wooded for 
ornamental or picturesque purposes : — 

"Where the united plumage of an ancient wood 
extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood 
venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremost 
ranks, and left but so many detached and scattered 
trees as softened the approach of gloom, and blended 
a chequered light with the thus lengthened shadows 
of the remaining columns." 

But Walpole, a little farther on, admits 
that Kent, on the one hand, had assistance, 
and, on the other, had faults. 

*'Mr. Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his 
taste. The design of the Prince of Wales' garden at 
Carlton House was evidently borrowed from the poet's 
at Twickenham. There was a little of affected 
modesty in the latter, when he said of all his works 
he was most proud of his garden. ... I do not know 
whether the disposition of the garden at Rousham, 
laid out for General Dormer, and, in my opinion, the 
most engaging of all Kent's works, was not planned 
on the model of Mr. Pope's, at least in the opening 
and retiring shades of Venus's vale." 

He goes on to mention that he considered 



Horace Walpole. 199 

the weak side of Kent's character his want 
of majesty, and his extravagant and undis- 
cerning imitation of nature ; but at the same 
time he says, " That Kent's ideas were but 
rarely great was in some measure owing to 
the novelty of his art ; " and of course he 
was followed by other men, who introduced 
improvements on his plans as he had done 
on those of Bridgman, excellent as both were 
reckoned to be in their time and in relation 
to those who had gone before them. Re- 
ferring to the advance of later men on his 
inventions and ideas, Walpole explains how 
that progress was partly due to causes beyond 
the control of Kent : — 

" Succeeding artists have added new master-strokes 
to these touches perhaps. The introduction of foreign 
trees and plants, which we owe principally to Archi- 
bald, Duke of Argyle, contributed essentially to the 
richness of colouring so peculiar to our modem land- 
scape. The mixture of various greens, the contrast 
of forms between our forest-trees and the northern and 
West-Indian firs and pines, are improvements more 
recent than Kent, or but little known to him. The 
weeping-willow and every florid shrub, each trace of 
delicate or bold leaf, are new tints in the composition 



200 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

of our gardens. The last century was certainly 
acquainted with many of those rare plants we now 
admire. The Weymouth pine has long been natura- 
lised here; the patriarch plant still (1770) exists at 
Longleat. The light and graceful acacia was known 
as early ; witness those ancient stems in the court of 
Bedford House, in Bloomsbury Square ; and in the 
Bishop of London's garden at Fulham are many 
exotics of very ancient date." 

Walpole was of opinion that Kent improved 
as he proceeded ; and he thought one of 
his latest works his best. 

"Kent's last designs," he says, "were in a higher 
style, as his ideas opened on success. The north 
terras at Claremont was much superior to the rest of 
the garden." 

Like other masters, Kent acquired a 
mannerism and a touch, which made his 
work easily recognisable by such as studied 
the subject. 

' ' A return of some particular thought was common 
to him with other painters, and made his hand known. 
A small lake, edged by a winding bank with scattered 
trees, that led to a seat at the head of a pond, was 
common to Claremont, Esher, and others of his 



Horace Walpole. 201 

designs. At Esher, * where Kent and Nature vied 
for Pelham's love,' the prospects more than aided the 
painter's genius." 

" Sir Henry Englefield, " he presently adds, " was 
one of the first improvers on the new style, and 
selected with singular taste that chief beauty of 
all gardens, prospect and fortunate points of 
view. " 

It may scarcely be requisite to explain that 
I have been the more copious in my extracts 
from Walpole' s Essay, because he stands as 
nearly as possible midway between the old 
school of gardening and the new ; and he 
was contemporary with Bridgman and Kent, 
two of the most eminent landscape gardeners 
of the eighteenth century ; and nearly so with 
Pope, who, by Walpole's acknowledgment, 
did much to promote the development of a 
better taste and feeling, not exactly in horti- 
culture, but in the arrangement of grounds. 
What Walpole says of Sir Henry Englefield 
may have been due to that gentleman's 
personal discernment and insight ; but it was 
probably rather the outcome of his employ- 
ment of some one who saw the possibility 
of carrying Kent's improvements still farther ; 



202 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

and among such there was no man more 
conspicuous than Brown, or, as he was usually 
called, Capability Brown. This is what 
Walpole has to say about the latter : — 

" It was fortunate for this country and Mr, Kent 
that he was succeeded by a very able master ; and did 
living artists come within my plan, I should be glad to 
do justice to Mr. Brown ; but he may be a genius by 
being reserved for some abler pen." 

The original English was completed in 
1770; but Brown had been dead some 
years when it appeared with the French 
version, for the first time, in 1785. 

I hope that I have seemed to justify my long 
detention of the reader with the Strawberry- 
Hill volume. It was its worth and virtue as 
a link between two ages, which tempted me 
to accord to it a separate chapter, rather than 
any intrinsic merit, which I had been able to 
discern in its pages. For in its treatment it 
is flimsy enough, and in point of style it is 
disagreeably affected and artificial. 



XVI. 
Bibliography of Gardening Literature 

(1603 — 1800), AND OF HeRBALS AND 

Bee Culture — William and Samuel 
Curtis — James and George Sowerby 
— The Lindleys and Loudons — 
Cryptogamic Flora of Scotland — 
Sir William Jackson Hooker. 

^HILE, in this and the companion 
treatise on Cookery, it scarcely 
enters into my plan to describe 
the later literature, or take cognisance of 
all the modern improvements in these two 
favourite sciences, having rather set my- 
self the task of tracing the early history of 
both arts, it may be useful to append a 
succinct catalogue of those publications on 
horticulture and the subjects immediately 
allied to it, which (as a rule) I have not 
treated in the text. 




204 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

There was not the same uninterrupted 
succession of books on this theme as on the 
less dispensable one of eating and drinking, 
dining and supping. I have, of course, in- 
serted accounts of Worlidge and many others 
in the narrative; but down to the time of 
Pope and Pope's Bathurst there does not 
seem to have been very much published 
on the subject. 

1. Profitable Instructions for the Manuring^ Sowing, 

and Planting of Kitchen Gardens. By Richard 
Gardiner, of Shrewsbury. 4to. 1603. 

2. The Fruiterer's Secrets. 4to. 1604. 

3. Instructions for the Increasing and Planting of 

Mulberry Trees. 4to. 1609. 

4. The English Husbandman. . . . Together with the 

Art of Planting, Grafting, and Gardening. By 
Gervase Markham. 4to. 161 3. 

5. Country Contentments, or The Husbandman's 

Recreations. By the same. 4to. 1623. 

6. A New Orchard and Garden. By W. Lawson. 

4to. 1623. 

7. A Garden of all sorts of pleasant Flowers y zvhich 

our English air zuill permit to be nursed up. By 
John Parkinson, Apothecary of London. Folio. 
London, 1629. 1656. 



BibliograpJiy of Garden Literattwe. 205 

8. Rhodon and Iris. A Pastoral presented at the 

Florists' Feast at Norwich, May 3rd, 1631. 
By Ralph Knevett. 4to. 1631, 

9. Mercurius Botatiiais, sive Plantarum grafid sus- 

cepti Itmeris, Anno MDCXXXIV.^ Descriptio, 
cum earum Noviinibus Latinis et Anglicis, etc. 
Londini : 1634-41. 8vo. Two parts. By 
Thomas Johnson, M.D. , of Selby, and dedicated 
under the name of Socius Itinerans to Dr. Theo- 
dore Mayerne, Dr. Lister, etc. 

[The copy before me has MSS. notes and 
matter added in a coeval hand, possibly the 
author's. It was sold at Sotheby's, August 
29th, 1877, No. 252. To part the first is at- 
tached a small folded plan of Bath, of which 
an account is comprised in the volume.*] 
\o. A Theatre of Plants. By John Parkinson. Folio. 

London. 1640. 
II. The Countryman's Recreation, or the Art of Plant- 
ings Graftings and Gardening, in three Bookes. 
. . . Whereunto is added, The Expert Gardener. 
By Gervase Markham. London : 1640. 4to. 
[ The Expej't Gardener purports to be derived 
from French and Dutch sources.] 

* Besides his published works, Johnson wrote an 
account of a botanical tour in Kent, with some com- 
panions, in the summer of 1629, and of the flora of 
Hampstead in the following August. The MS. of 
these two narratives, consisting of nineteen leaves in 



2o6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

12. The Garden of Eden. By Sir Hugh Piatt. In two 
parts, I2mo. 1653-60. 

13. The Art of Simpling. By W. Coles. i2mo. 
1656. 

14. Adam in Eden, or Nature'' s Paradise. By the 

same. Folio. 1657. 

15. Adam out of Eden; or. An Abstract of certain 
excellent Experiments touching the Advancement 
of Husbandry. By Ad. Speed. 8vo. London, 
1659. 

16. Flora, Ce}'es, Pomona. By John Rea. Folio. 

1665, 1676, 1702. 

17. Poems on Divers Occasions. [By Jeremiah 
Wells.] London : 1667. 8vo. On eight leaves 
at the end, marked ^, is printed The Garden, by 
A. C, that is, Abraham Cowley. 

18. The Complete Vineyard. By W. Hughes. 8vo. 
1670. 

19. Plantariim UmbelUferariim Distributio Nova, 
Per Tabidas Cognationis et Ajffinitatis ex Libris 
Natures Observata et delecta. . . . Per Robertum 
Morison. Oxonii. 1672. Folio. 

[The author was a Professor of Botany.] 

20. Rapin, Cf Gardens. In four books. Translated 
by John Evelyn. 8vo. 1673. 

[There are later editions, and it is included 
in Evelyn's Miscellaneous Works.] 

y 

octavo, was bound up with a copy of the Merctirius, 
sold in 1883. 



Bibliography of Garden Literature. 207 

21. The Planter's Manual. By C. Cotton. 8vo. 1675. 

22. The English Gardener ; or, A Sure Guide to 
Young Planters and Gardeners, hozu to Order the 
Kitchen- Garden, Orchards, and Pleasure Garden, 
by Leonard Meager. 4to. 1678. With plates. 

23. Plain and Full Instructions to raise all sorts of 

Fruit-trees that prosper in England. By T. 
Langford . 8 vo. 1 68 1 . 

24. The Florist's Vade Mecujn. By Samuel Gilbert, 
of Bewdley, Worcestershire. i2mo. 1682. 

25. Aphorisms tipon a new Way of improving Cyder ^ 

or making Cyder-Royal ; to which are added 
certain expedients concerning the Raising and 
Planting of Apple-trees, Gooseberry-trees. ... By 
Richard Haines. Folio. 1684. 

26. The Gentleman' s Recreation. In two parts. By 
Richard Blowe. Folio. 1686— 1710. 

[The section on Agriculture and Husbandry 
contains a good deal of information on garden- 
ing and fruit-trees.] 

27. The Book of Knowledge. By Samuel Strangeboys. 

i2mo. 

[To the later editions was attached a fourth 
part, containing the Complete Gardener.'] 

28. The Compleat Gard'ner ; or. Directions for Culti- 
vating and Right-ordering of Fruit-Gardens and 
Kitchen- Gardens. In six Books. By M. de la 
Quintinye, Chief Director of all the gardens of 
the French King. To which is added His Treatise 
of Orange-Trees, with the raising of Melons, 



2o8 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter attire. 

omitted in the French edition. Made English 
by John Evelyn, Esquire. Folio. London. 1693. 
Plates. 

[In 1699 an abridgment of this work by 
George London and Henry Wise appeared in 
8vo, "made of more use, with very con- 
siderable improvements."] 

29. Curiosities of Nature and Art in Husbandry aitd 
Gardening, containing new experiments in the 
improvement of Land, Trees, Fruits, etc. 8vo. 
1707. Plates. 

30. The Fruit- Gardener'' s Calendar. By John 
Lawrence. 8vo. 17 17. 

31. A Philosophical Treatise of Husbandry and 

Gardening. By G. A. Agricola, Translated 
from the German by Richard Bradley, F.R.S. 
4to. 1 72 1. With cuts. 

32. The Gardener s Calendar. By Philip Miller. 
Svo. 1 724. 2 vols. 

33. The Gardener^ s and Florisfs Dictionary. By the 
same. Svo. 1724. 

[A standard work in the last century. It 
was reprinted in 1731, folio, and often subse- 
quently. It is a mere compilation. Miller 
published other books of a professional nature.] 

34. The Gardener'' s Universal Calendar. By Benedict 
Whitmill. Svo. 1726. 

35. The Gentlemayi and Gardener's Calendar. By 
Richard Bradley, Professor of Botany, and 
F.R.S. Svo. 1728. 



BibliograpJiy of Garden Litn'ature. 209 

36. The Gentleman Gardener Instructed. By the 
Rev. David Stevenson. 8vo. 1746. 

37. The Compleet Florist. 8vo. London. 1747. 
With 100 plates. 

38. A Description of the Gardens of Lord Cobhani at 
Sto7ve. 8vo. 1 75 1. With 11 plates. 

39. The Scots Gardener s Director. By John Justice. 
8vo. 1755. 

40. The Gardener's New Calendar. By John Hill, 
M.D. 8vo. 1758. 

41. The Botanist's and Gardener'' s Dictionary and 
Calendar. By James Wheeler, Nurseryman at 
Gloucester. 8vo. 1763. 

42. Every Man his own Gardener. By Thomas 
Mawe (John Abercrombie). 8vo. 1766. 

[Abercrombie published other works in his 
own name.] 

43. The Practical Gardener and Gentleman^ s Directory 
for every month in the year. By James Garton. 
8vo. 1769. 

44. The Modern Gardener, or Universal Calendar. 
From the MSS. of Mr. Hin. By James Header. 
8vo. 1 77 1. Borrowed from Mawe. 

45. The Garden Compajiion. By the Rev. John 
Trusler. 8vo. 1771. Abridged from Hill. 

46. The Gardener's and Planter's Calevdar. By 
Richard Weston. 8vo. 1771. 

47. The Gardener's Pocket Calendar, By the same. 
8vo. 1773. 

T4 



2 10 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter attire. 

48. The Gentleman and Lady's Gardener. By Mr. 
Eadmeades [a seedsman near London Bridge]. 
8vo. 1774. 

49. The English Gai-dener^s New and Complete 
Calendar. 8vo. 1778. 

50. The Gardener's Calendar. By John Ellis [gar- 
dener to the Bishop of Lincoln.] 8vo. 1778. 

51. On the Progress of Gardening. In a Letter from 
the Hon. Daines Barrington to the Rev. Mr. 
Norris, Secretary. Read June 13th, 1782. 
Archczologia, vii. 113, et seqq. 

[This is a general survey, not confined to 
English gardening.] 

52. Gibson's Account of the Gardens in and round 
London in 1691. Read before the Society of 
Antiquaries in 1794. Archceologia, vol. xii. 

[This forms an Appendix to the present 
work.] 

53. .4 Treatise on the Ctilttire of the Fine-Apple, and 

the Management of the Hot- House. By William 
Speechly. 8vo. York. 1795. Plates. 

54. The Botanist's Calendar and Pocket English 
Flora. i2mo. 1797- 

55* Lntroduction to the Knowledge and Practice of 
Gardening. By the Rev. Charles Marshall. 
With a Calendar. Third Edition. i2mo. 1800. 

56. A Descriptive Account of White Knights, near 
Reading, a seat of the Duke of Marlborough, by 



Old English Herbals. 2 1 1 

Mr. and Mrs. Hofland. Folio, privately printed, 
N.D. [about 1820.] 

[This volume contains an introductory ac- 
count of gardening by Mrs. Hofland.] 
57. Gleanmgs on Gardens, chiefly respecting those of 
the Ancient Style in England. By S. Felton. 
8vo. London. 1829. Pp. 72 + viii, 

This list brings down the literature of 
gardening to the commencement of the 
new school of horticulture. 

But I shall add the particulars of the 
principal writers or books on Herbs and 
Bee-Culture on a similar principle : — 

OLD ENGLISH HERBALS. 

1. The Great Herbal. Folio. 15 16, 1526, 1529, 

1539, 1 56 1. From the French. 

2. The Little Herbal. \\.o. 1525, 1526. From 

the Latin, 

3. A Book of the Properties of Herbs, zvhich is called 

an Herbal. By Walter Gary. 8vo. R. Redman 
(about 1540). 

[All the editions are undated.] 

4. Macer's Herbal, practised by Dr. Linacre. i2mo. 

[about 1540]. Two editions. 

5. A Little Herbal of the Properties of Herbes. By 

Anthony Ascham. 8vo. 1550. 

6. Turner's Herbal. Folio. 1551. Part II., folio, 

1562. Part III., folio, 1568. With cuts. 



212 Gleanings iii Old Garden Literature. 

7. A New Herbal, or History of Plants. By Rem- 

bert Dodoens. Translated by Henry Lyte. 
Folio. 1578. With cuts. 

8. An Herbal for the Bible. By Levinus Leminius. 

Translated by Thomas Newton. 8vo. 1581. 

9. 77/1? Herbal, or Genei'al History of Plants. By 

John Gerard, of London, Master in Chirurgery. 
Folio. 1597. Edited by Thomas Johnson, the 
Botanist. Folio. 1633, 1636. 

10. Ram^s Little Dodeon. By W. Ram. 4to. 1606. 

BEES. 

1. The Profitable Art of Gardening. By Thomas 

Hill. Third edition. 8vo. 1568. With a Treatise 
" Of the Miraculous Government of the Bees " 
annexed. 

2. A Treatise Concerning the Right Use and 

Ordering of Bees. By Edmund Southern. 4to. 

1593- 

3. The Ordering of Bees. By John Levett. 4to. 

1634. 

4. A Discourse or History of Bees. By Richard 

Remnant. 4to. 1637. 

5. The Reformed Co?nmomvealth of Bees. By S. 

Hartlib. 4to. 1655. 

[In this book is a copper-plate cut of a hive 
so constructed as to remove the honey without 
injuring or disturbing the inmates.] 

6. Vinetnm Britannicum. By John Worlidge. 



William mid Samuel Curtis. 213 

Second Edition. To which is added, " A 
Discourse teaching the best way of improving 
Bees." 8vo. 1678. 

7. A Further Discovery of Bees. By M. Rusden. 

8vo. 1679. Plates. 

8. The True Amazon ; or. The Monarchy of Bees. 

By Jos. Warder. 8vo. 17 13. 

9. The English Apiary ; or., The Complete Bee- 

Master. By John Gedde. 8vo. 1721. 

10. The Antient Bee- Master s Farewell. By John 
Keys. 8vo. 1796. 

11. A Treatise on Bees. By the same. l2mo. 1814. 

Of the modern school the foremost name 
is that of Curtis, of whose nursery at Old 
Brompton we have already heard. Between 
1777 and 1799 William Curtis produced 
his celebrated and still esteemed work, the 
Flora Londinensis, or Plates and Descriptions 
of such Plants as groiv zvild in the Environs 
of Londo7i. 2 vols., folio. This great work 
was edited, with additions and corrections, 
by Graves and Hooker, in 1821. 

In 1787 Curtis commenced his Botanical 
Magazine., which he carried down to 1826, 
and which was continued by his son Samuel 
and Sir W. J. Hooker to 1858. The author 



214 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

published a Coinpanion to the Magazine in 
1788; it was a periodical which exercised 
a powerful influence on the advancement of 
botany and the diffusion of an interest in 
the subject. 

The younger Curtis, besides editing his 
father's Flora, brought out in 1822 a mono- 
graph on the Camellia. 

Next to Curtis and his son comes 
SowERBY, a family which during more than 
half a century (i 790-1850) occupied a 
prominent and honourable position in this 
department as well as in those of conchology 
and mineralogy. The English Botany of 
James Sowerby appeared between 1790 and 
1820 in numbers forming six-and-thirty 
octavo volumes ; and it is still a favourite 
and useful set of books. A supplement was 
afterward added. 

This is perhaps James Sowerby the Elder's 
best known work, and that on which his 
reputation chiefly depends. But both his 
son and himself and George Brettingham 
Sowerby continued to enrich our literature 
with erudite compilations on nearly every 



TJie Sozverbys and Lindleys. 215 

branch of this fascinating art, and on subjects 
cognate to it, down to a date within living 
memory, — a link between the old and modern 
schools, but with a clear leaning to a more 
enlightened and intelligible system of classifi- 
cation, and with a knowledge of the Genera 
amplified by the latest discoveries at that 
period. 

The late Mr. Henry Bohn, in his re- 
cension of the Bibliographer s Manual, has 
afforded practical evidence of the strong 
personal interest which he felt in horticul- 
ture and botany by the carefully-prepared 
lists of the labours of the three Sowerbys, 
and of one or two other authors, whom I 
have presently to mention. Mr. Bohn 
himself printed for private circulation a 
descriptive catalogue of his own extensive 
collection of Roses. 

George and John Lindley presented a 
third example of a family which, during 
successive generations, did its part in spread- 
ing a correct knowledge of all the branches 
of tree, plant, and vegetable culture, and in 
improving the management of the orchard 



2 1 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

and kitchen garden. But the latter originally 
made his name as a writer, not only on 
the British but on the exotic flora, by 
the publication, in 1821, of his Collectanea 
Botanica and other works. The exertions 
of John Lindley were most indefatigable, 
and covered the whole ground. There was 
no section of botany and horticulture which 
he did not treat with ability and public ad- 
vantage. In 1829 he delivered his introduc- 
tory lecture before the University of London. 
His printed contributions to the branch of 
letters of which he had made a special 
study, extended over a quarter of a century, 
and occupy nearly two columns of the small 
type of the Bibliographer s Manual. 

Kx the same time, in Scotland, Robert Kaye 
Greville offered a splendid contribution to 
botanical learning in his Scottish Cryptogamic 
Flora, which came out in six large volumes 
between 1822 and 1828, and which seems 
entitled to the distinction of being considered 
the earliest specific work on that subject in 
our literature. Mr. Greville is also known as 
the author of the Flora Edinen sis (8vo, 1824) 



Loudon. 217 

and of a monograph on British Algai (8vo, 
1830). 

In 1829 Mr. Loudon commenced the 
publication of his Magazine of Natural 
History, and Journal of Zoology, Bofa?iy, etc., 
which formed a very valuable series, and 
ran to 1840, making thirteen octavo volumes. 
Mr. Loudon had the assistance of several of 
the most distinguished specialists of the day 
— Audubon, Bell, Vigors, Forbes, Waterton, 
and others ; and it was to the pages of this 
periodical that Ruskin, then a youth, con- 
tributed in 1834-6 his earliest efforts in print. 
In his Instructions in the Use of Rudimentary 
Series he says : — 

"Mr. Loudon was the first literary patron who sent 
words of mine to be actually set in print, in his 
Magazine of Nahiral History, when I was sixteen." 

In 1 83 1 Robert Sweet completed his Hot- 
house and Greenhouse Manual, which I appre- 
hend to have been the parent production on 
that specific and vital part of the subject, and 
which a reference to Lowndes will shew to 



2 1 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

have been only one of a series of labours 
in the field ; and Loudon's Hortus Byitminicus 
followed in 1832. 

The group of distinguished men, to whom 
we are permanently indebted for placing our 
country in respect to this province of science 
in as high a rank as a relatively ungenial 
climate will ever permit, was reinforced at this 
time by Joseph Paxton, principal gardener 
to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. 
Paxton's name is still favourably recollected 
in connection with his professional labours, 
especially the Exhibition of 185 1 and the 
Crystal Palace, as well as with his literary 
achievements, of which the chief are the 
Hortiadhiral Register, cov[i\xiQnc\T\g in 1831, 
and carried down to 1836. and the Magazine 
of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants , 
which he edited from 1834 to 1849. He 
published a monograph on the Dahlia in 
1838, and other books, including the Flower 
Garden (1850-3), 3 vols., royal 8vo, in 
which he was assisted by Dr. James 
Lindley. 

In 1838 appeared Loudon's Suburban 



Loudon. 219 

Gardener and his most important work, the 
Arbor etuvi et Fruticetwn Brtta?iniaim,'^ the 
latter in eight octavo volumes. It was, per- 
haps, next to the Magazine just noticed, and 
the Eiicyclopcedia of the same author, the most 
capable and successful attempt to diffuse a 
general knowledge of all the new species and 
varieties of forest and fruit trees, plants, and 
shrubs, imported from foreign countries both 
by professional growers and by private enter- 
prise. The magazine had doubtless proved of 
the greatest utility to the author in the way of 
preparation and learning. 

Loudon pays an appropriate tribute to the 
warm and steady encouragement afforded by 
the Northumberland family to this interesting 
cause, and he mentions, as his main object 
in undertaking the labour, on the one hand, 
the slow progress made by this country in 
availing itself of new discoveries, and, on 
the other, the tendency of existing kinds to 
disappear from neglect. 

* Published in 1822, reprinted in 1824, rewritten 
in 1 83 1, and republished, edited by Mrs. Loudon^ 
in 1850. 



2 20 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



%b 



Loudon was not an antiquary, nor did he, 
I believe, profess to be one ; and he com- 
mitted many errors in regard to the original 
introduction of trees, herbs, and flowers into 
Britain. But his books, and his wife's too, 
mark a distinct epoch in the literary as well 
as the technical history of arboriculture and 
gardening, just as the publication of Miller's 
Dictionary, and the exertions of several 
of Miller's contemporaries, — Abercrombie, 
Weston, Forsyth, and others, — had done in 
the eighteenth century. 

Besides the valuable labours of Mr. 
Loudon in flower and tree culture, his wife, 
who informs us that she owed all her ac- 
quaintance with the subject to his instruc- 
tions and encouragement, wrote those very 
useful and still favourite manuals. Gardening 
for Ladies and The Ladies' Companion to the 
Floiuer Garden. Both were frequently re- 
printed. I have the sixth edition of the 
former (1843), and the seventh of the latter 
(1858). It seems to have been about 1830 
that this accomplished lady first entered on 
her experiences. 



Mr. and Mrs. London., etc. 221 

The Flower^ Fruit., and Kitchen Garden^ by 
James Main, A.L.S., came out in three parts 
in 1840-T, i2mo, with a few pages of Intro- 
ductory Remarks. .There is a great deal of 
information in this handy Httle book, which 
is still as applicable as when it was written ; 
and it possesses the advantage of being suc- 
cinct and intelligible. It bears the same sort 
of relation to the larger productions of the 
Sowerbys, Lindleys, and Loudons that Miss 
Acton's cookery-book bears to those of Ude, 
Soyer, and Francatelli. 

But before I quit the Loudons and my 
present subject, I shall extract from Gar- 
dening for Ladies., sixth edition (1843), ^ 
portion of the introduction, because this and 
the companion book formed nearly the 
earliest endeavour to bring the treatment of 
flowers within the comprehension of the 
possessors of small private gardens : — 

"When I married Mr. Loudon," his wife frankly 
and gracefully says, "it is scarcely possible to imagine 
any person more completely ignorant than I was of 
everything relating to plants and gardening ; and, as 
may be easily conceived, I found eveiy one about me 



22 2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

so well acquainted with the subject, that I was soon 
ashamed of my ignorance. My husband, of course, 
was quite as anxious to teach me as I was to learn, 
and it is the result of his instructions that I now (after 
more than twelve years' experience of their efficacy) 
wish to make public for the benefit of others. 

" I do this, because I think that books intended for 
professional gardeners are seldom suitable to the wants 
of amateurs. ... As the rapid sale of the previous 
editions of this work affords the surest proof that it 
has met the wants of those for whose use it was 
designed, it may be asked why I have made so many 
alterations and additions. My answer is, that I have 
done so in order that my book may keep pace with 
the improving spirit of the times. For this reason I 
have written the chapter on manures, in order to give 
my readers an idea of the new theories of Liebig on 
that subject ; and I have also given them a sketch of 
M. De Chevreul's new doctrine of colours, as applied 
to flower gardens." 

It is gratifying to meet with genuine 
workers. In her other publication, The 
Ladies^ Companio7i to the Flower Garden^ 
seventh edition (1858), Mrs. Loudon was 
more directly indebted to her husband, who 
wrote several of the articles which it com- 
prises, and read and revised the whole in the 
first and second impressions. The Appendix 



Mr. and Mrs. London, etc. 223 

was suggested by Lord Murray, to whom 
Mrs. Loudon owns her weighty obligations. 

But the preface to the Ladies^ Companion 
has a concluding paragraph, which I fervently 
wish that publishers and authors would alike 
take to heart : — 

" Notwithstanding the large sale of the work (which 
has exceeded twenty-five thousand copies), it has now 
been stereotyped ; but every new edition has been 
carefully revised, and descriptions of new plants and 
of new discoveries in floriculture have been added, so 
as to bring the whole down completely to the present 
day." 

Perhaps it was the refusal to perpetuate 
errors and imperfect information which made 
it necessary for the writer to seek a new 
publisher, for the Ladies' Companion has not 
the name of Mr. Murray at the foot of 
the title-page. 

Mr. Bohn, in his edition of the Biblio- 
grapher's Manual of Lowndes, furnishes an 
elaborate list of the publications, from 18 13 
to 1854, of the late Sir William Jackson 
Hooker, who, in his way, as the Loudons 
in theirs, so largely contributed to the 



224 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

development and progress of the science 
which he above all others loved and under- 
stood. 

Besides the well-known works of Lindley, 
it is proper to mention the large folio volume 
of Natm'e- Printed FernSy issued under the 
care of Henry Bradbury, and re-produced 
some years later in four octavo volumes 
uniform with the Algce. published by the 
same process. 




APPENDIX. 

A Short Account of Several Gardens 
NEAR London, with Remarks on 
some Particulars wherein they 
Excel or are Deficient, upon a 
View of them in December, 1691.* 

AMPTON COURT Garden is a 
large plat, environed with an iron 
palisade round about next the 
park, laid all in walks, grass 
plats, and borders. Next to the house, some 
flat and broad beds are set with narrow rows 
of dwarf box, in figures like lace-patterns. In 
one of the lesser gardens is a large green 
house divided into several rooms, and all of 
them with stoves under them, and fire to keep 

* Communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by 
the Reverend Dr. Hamilton, Vice-President, from an 
original manuscript in his possession. Read July 3rd, 
1794. [This is the narrative by Gibson, to which I 
have referred more than once in the text.] 



15 



226 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

a continual heat. In these there are no orange 
or lemon trees, or myrtles, or any greens, but 
such tender foreign ones that need continual 
warmth. 

2. Kensington Gardens are not great nor 
abounding with fine plants. The orange, 
lemon, myrtles, and what other trees they had 
there in summer, were all removed to Mr. Lon- 
don's and Mr. Wise's greenhouse at Brompton 
Park, a little mile from them. But the walks 
and grass laid very fine, and they were digging 
up a flat of four or five acres to enlarge their 
garden. 

3. The Queen Dowager's Garden, at Ham- 
mersmztk, has a good greenhouse, with a high 
erected front to the South, whence the roof 
falls backward. The house is well stored with 
greens of common kinds ; but the Queen not 
being for curious plants or flowers, they want 
of the most curious sorts of greens, and in the 
garden there is little of value but wall trees ; 
though the gardener there. Monsieur Hermon 
Van Guine, is a man of great skill and in- 
dustry, having raised great numbers of orange 
and lemon trees by inoculation, with myrtles, 
Roman bayes, and other greens of pretty 
shapes, which he has to dispose of. 

4. Beddington Garden, at present in the 



Appendix. 227 

hands of the duke of Norfolk, but belonging 
to the family of Carew, has in it the best 
orangery in England. The orange and lemon 
trees there grow in the ground, and have done 
so near one hundred years, as the gardener, 
an aged man, said he believed. There are a 
great number of them, the house wherein they 
are being above two hundred feet long; they 
are most of them thirteen feet high, and very 
full of fruit, the gardener not having taken off 
so many flowers this last summer as usually 
others do. He said, he gathered off them at 
least ten thousand oranges this last year. The 
heir of the family being but about five years of 
age, the trustees take care of the orangery, 
and this year they built a new house over 
them. There are some myrtles growing among 
them, but they look not well for want of trim- 
ming. The rest of the garden is all out of 
order, the orangery being the gardener's chief 
care ; but it is capable of being made one of 
the best gardens in England, the soil being 
very agreeable, and a clear silver stream 
running through it. 

5 . Chelsea Physick Garden has great variety 
of plants, both in and out of greenhouses. 
Their perennial green hedges and rows of 
different coloured herbs are very pretty, and 



22 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter atnre. 

so are their banks set with shades of herbs in 
the Irish stitch -way, but many plants of the 
garden were not in so good order as might be 
expected, and as would have been answerable 
to other things in it. After I had been there, 
I heard that Mr. Watts, the keeper of it, was 
blamed for his neglect, and that he would be 
removed. 

6. My Lord Raiielagh^ s Garden being but 
lately made, the plants are but small, but the 
plats, borders, and walks, are curiously kept, 
and elegantly designed, having the advantage 
of opening into Chelsea college walks. The 
kitchen garden there lies very fine, with walks 
and seats, one of which, being large and 
covered, was then under the hands of a curious 
painter. The house there is very fine within, 
all the rooms being wainscoted with Non\^ay 
oak, and all the chimneys adorned with carv- 
ing, as in the council-chamber in Chelsea 
college. 

7. Arlington Garden, being now in the 
hands of my lord of Devonshire, is a fair plat, 
with good walks, both airy and shady. There 
are six of the greatest earthen pots that are 
any where else, being at least two feet over 
within the edge ; but they stand abroad, and 
have nothing in them but the tree holy-oke, an 



Appendix. 229 

indifferent plant, which grows well enough in 
the ground. Their greenhouse is very well, 
and their greenyard excels ; but their greens 
were not so bright and clean as farther off in 
the country, as if they suffered something from 
the smutty air of the town. 

8. My Lord Faicconbergh^ s Garden, at 
Sutton Court, has several pleasant walks and 
apartments in it ; but the upper garden next 
the house is too irregular, and the bowling 
green too little to be commended. The green- 
house is very well made, but ill set. It is 
divided into three rooms, and very well fur- 
nished with good greens ; but it is so placed, 
that the sun shines not on the plants in winter, 
where they most need its beams, the dwelling- 
house standing betwixt the sun and it. The 
maze or wilderness there is very pretty, being 
set all with greens, with a cypress arbour in 
the middle, supported with a well-wrought 
timber frame ; of late it grows thin at the 
bottom, by their letting the fir trees grow 
without their reach undipped. The enclosure 
wired-in for white pheasants and partridges 
is a fine apartment, especially in summer, 
when the boxes of Italian bayes are set out, 
and the timber walk with vines on the side 
is very fine when the blew pots are on the 



230 Glemiings in Old Garden Literature, 

pedestals on the top of it, and so is the fish- 
pond with the greens at the head of it. 

9. Sir William Tcinj^le, being lately gone 
to live at his house in Farneham, his garden 
and greenhouse at West Shee?ie, where he has 
lived of late years, are not so well kept as they 
have been, many of his orange trees, and other 
greens, being given to Sir John Temple, his 
brother, at East Sheene, and other gentlemen; 
but his greens that are remaining (being as 
good a stock as most greenhouses have) are 
very fresh and thriving, the room they stand in 
suiting well with them and being well con- 
trived, if it be no defect in it that the floor is 
a foot at least within the ground, as is also the 
floor of the dwelling-house. He had attempted 
to have orange trees to grow in the ground (as 
at Beddington), and for that purpose had 
enclosed a square of ten feet wide, with a low 
brick wall, and sheltered them with wood, but 
they would not do. His orange trees in 
summer stand not in any particular square or 
enclosure, under some shelter, as most others 
do, but are disposed on pedestals of Portland 
stone, at equal distance, on a board over 
against a South wall, where is his best fruit, 
and fairest walk. 

10. Sir Henry Ca^elPs garden at Kew has 



Appendix, 231 

as curious greens, and is as well kept as any 
about London. His two lentiscus trees (for 
which he paid forty pounds to Vesprit) are 
said to be the best in England, not only of 
their kind, but of greens. He has four white 
striped hollies, about four feet above their 
cases, kept round and regular, which cost 
him five pounds a tree this last year, and six 
laurustinuses he has, with large round equal 
heads, which are very flowery and make a fine 
show. His orange trees and other choicer 
greens stand out in summer in two walks about 
fourteen feet wide, enclosed with a timber 
frame about seven feet high, and set with 
silver firs hedge-wise, which are as high as the 
frame, and this to secure them from wind and 
tempest, and sometimes from the scorching 
sun. His terrace walk, bare in the middle, 
and grass on either side, with a hedge of 
rue on one side next a low wall, and a row of 
dwarf trees on the other, shews very fine, 
and so do from thence his yew hedges with 
trees of the same at equal distance, kept in 
pretty shapes with tonsure. His flowers and 
fruits are of the best, for the advantage 
of which two parallel walls, about fourteen 
feet high, were now raised and almost finished. 
If the ground were not a little irregular, it 



232 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

would excel in other points, as well as in 
furniture. 

11. Sir Stephen Fox's garden at Chiswick 
being but of five years' standing, is brought to 
great perfection for the time. It excells for a 
fair gravel walk betwixt two yew hedges, with 
rounds and spires of the same, all under 
smooth tonsure. At the far end of this garden 
are two myrtle hedges that cross the garden ; 
they are about three feet high, and covered in 
winter with painted board cases. The other 
gardens are full of flowers and salleting, and 
the walls well clad. The greenhouse is well 
built, well set, and well furnished. 

12. Sir Thomas Cooke' s garden at Ilack^iey 
is very large, and not so fine at present, be- 
cause of his intending to be at three thousand 
pounds' charge with it this next summer, as his 
gardener said. There are two greenhouses in 
it, but the greens are not extraordinary, for 
one of the roofs being made a receptacle for 
water, overcharged with weight, fell down last 
year upon the greens, and made a great de- 
struction among the trees and pots. In one 
part of it is a warren, containing about two 
acres, very full of coneys, though there was 
but a couple put in a few years since. There 
is a pond or a mote round about them, and on 



Appendix. 233 

the outside of that a brick wall four feet high, 
both which I think will not keep them within 
their compass. There is a large fish-pond 
lying on the South to a brick wall, which is finely 
clad with philaria. Water brought from far 
in pipes furnishes his several ponds as they 
want it. 

13. Sir Josiah Child's plantations of walnut 
and other trees at Wansted are much more 
worth seeing than his gardens, which are but 
indifferent. Besides the great number of fruit 
trees he has planted in his enclosures with 
great regularity, he has vast number of elms, 
ashes, limes, &c., planted in rows on Epping 
forest. Before his outgate, which is above 
twelve score [yards] distance from his house, 
are two large fish-ponds on the forest, in the way 
from his house, with trees on either side lying 
betwixt them ; in the middle of either pond is an 
island betwixt twenty and thirty yards over, and 
in the middle of each a house, the one like the 
other. They are said to be well stocked with 
fish, and so they had need to be if they cost 
him five thousand pounds, as it is said they 
did ; as also that his plantations cost twice as 
much. 

14. '^ivs: Robert Clayton has great plantations 
at Marden in Surrey, in a soil not very benign 



2 34 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

to plants, but with great charge he forces 
Nature to obey him. His gardens are big 
enough, but strangely irregular, his chief walk 
not being level, but rising in the middle and 
falling much more at one end than the other ; 
neither is the wall carried by a line either on 
the top or sides, but runs like an ordinary park 
wall, built as the ground goes. He built a 
good greenhouse, but set it so that the hills in 
winter keep the sun from it, so that they place 
their greens in a house on higher ground not 
built for that purpose. His dwelling-house 
stands very low, surrounded with great hills ; 
and yet they have no water but what is forced 
from a deep well into a waterhouse, whence 
they are furnished by pipes at pleasure. 

15. The Archbishop of Canterbury's garden 
at Lambeth has little in it but walks, the late 
archbishop not delighting in one, but they 
are now making them better; and they have 
already made a greenhouse, one of the finest 
and costliest about the town. It is of three 
rooms, the middle having a stove under it ; the 
foresides of the rooms are almost all glass, the 
roof covered with lead, the whole part (to 
adorn the building) rising gravel-wise higher 
than the rest ; but it is placed so near Lam- 
beth church, that the sun shines most on it in 



Appendix. 235 

winter after eleven o'clock ; a fault owned by 
the gardener, but not thought on by the con- 
trivers. Most of the greens are oranges and 
lemons, which have very large ripe fruit on 
them. 

16. Dr. Uvedale oi Enfield is a great lover 
of plants, and having an extraordinary art in 
managing them, is become master of the 
greatest and choicest collection of exotic 
greens that is perhaps any where in this land. 
His greens take up six or seven houses or room- 
steads. His orange trees and largest myrtles 
fill up his biggest house, and another house 
is filled with myrtles of a less size, and these 
more nice and curious plants, that need closer 
keeping, are in warmer rooms, and some of 
them stoved when he thinks fit. His flowers 
are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture 
of them very methodical and curious ; but, to 
speak of the garden in the whole, it does not 
lie fine to please the eye, his delight and care 
lying more in the ordering particular plants, 
than in the pleasing view and form of his 
garden. 

17. Dr. Tillotson's garden neax Endfield is 
a pleasureable place for walks, and some good 
walls there are too ; but the tall aspin trees^ 
and the many ponds in the heart of it, are not 



236 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

so agreeable. He has two houses for greens, 
but had few in them, all the best being removed 
to Lambeth. The house is moated about. 

18. Mr. Evelyn has a pleasant villa sXDe^f- 
ford^ a fine garden for walks and hedges 

(especially his holly one, which he writes of in 
his Sylva), and a pretty little greenhouse, with 
an indifferent stock in it. In his garden he 
has four large round philareas, smooth clipped, 
raised on a single stalk from the ground, a 
fashion now much used. Part of his garden is 
very woody and shady for walking ; but his 
garden, not being walled, has little of the best 
fruits. 

19. Mr. Watfs house and garden made 
near Endfield are new ; but the garden for 
the time is very fine, and large and regularly 
laid out, with a fair fish-pond in the middle. 
He built a greenhouse this summer with three 
rooms (somewhat like the archbishop of 
Canterbury's), the middle with a stove under 
it, and a sky-light above, and both of them of 
glass on the foreside, with shutters within, and 
the roof finely covered with Irish slate. But 
this fine house is under the same great fault 
with three before (Numbers 8, 14, 15) : they 
built it in summer, and thought not of winter ; 
the dwelling house on the South side interpos- 



Appendix. 237 

ing betwixt the sun and it now when its beams 
should refresh plants. 

20. Brompton Park garden, belonging to 
Mr. London and Mr. Wise, has a large long 
greenhouse, the front all glass and board, the 
North side brick. Here the King's greens, 
which were in summer at Kensington, are 
placed, but they take but little room in com- 
parison of their own. Their garden is chiefly 
a nursery for all sorts of plants, of which they 
are very full. 

21. Mr. Raynton's garden at Endfield is 
observable for nothing but his greenhouse, 
which he has had for many years. His 
orange, lemon, and myrtle trees, are as full 
and furnished as any in cases. He has a 
myrtle cut in shape of a chaire, that is at least 
six feet high from the case, but the lower part 
is thin of leaves. The rest of the garden is 
very ordinary, and on the outside of his garden 
he has a warren, which makes the ground 
about his seat lye rudely, and sometimes the 
coneys work under the wallj into the garden. 

22. Mr. Richardson at East Bar net has 
a pretty garden, with fine walks and good 
flowers ; but the garden not being walled 
about they have less summer fruit, yet are, 
therefore, the more industrious in managing 



238 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 

the peach and apricot dwarf standards, which, 
they say, supply them plentifully with very 
good fruit. There is a very good fish-pond in 
the middle of it, from which a broad gravel 
walk leads to the highway, where a fair pair 
of broad gates, with a narrower on either side, 
open at the top to look through small bars, 
well wrought and well painted, are a great 
ornament to the garden. They have orange 
and lemon trees ; but the wife and son being 
the managers of the garden (the husband 
being gouty and not minding it), they cannot 
prevail for a house for them other than a barn 
«nd. 

2T,. Captain Foster'' s garden at Lambeth 
has many curiosities in it. His greenhouse 
is full of fresh and flourishing plants, and 
before it is the finest striped holly hedge that 
perhaps is in England. He has many myrtles, 
not the greatest, but of the most fanciful 
shapes that are any where else. He has a 
framed walk of timber covered with vines, 
which, with others, running on most of his 
walls without prejudice to his lower trees, 
yield him a deal of wine. Of flowers he has 
good choice, and his Virginia and other birds 
in a great variety, with his glass hive, add 
much to the pleasure of his garden. 



Appendix. 239 

24. Monsieur Anthony Vesprit has a little 
garden of very choice things. His greenhouse 
has no very great number of plants, but what 
he has are of the best sort, and very well 
ordered. His oranges and lemons (fruit and 
tree) are extraordinary fair, and for lentiscus's 
and Roman bayes he has choice above others. 

25. Ricketts, 2XHoxton, has a large ground, 
and abundantly stocked with all manner of 
flowers, fruit-trees, and other garden plants, 
with lime trees, which are now much planted ; 
and, for a sale garden, he has a very good 
greenhouse, and well filled with fresh greens, 
besides which he has another room very full 
of greens in pots. He has a greater stock of 
Assyrian thyme than any body else ; for, 
besides many pots of it, he has beds abroad, 
with plenty of roots, which they cover with mats 
and straw in winter. He sells his things with 
the dearest, and, not taking due care to have 
his plants prove well, he is supposed to have 
lost much of his custom. 

26. Pearson has not near so large a ground 
as Ricketts (on whom he almost joins), and 
therefore he has not so many trees, but of 
flowers he has great choice, and of anemonies 
he avers he has the best about London, and 
sells them only to gentlemen. He has no 



240 Gleanings in Old Garden Litevature. 

greenhouse, yet has abundance of myrtles and 
striped philareas, with oranges and other 
greens, which he keeps safe enough under 
sheds, sunk a foot within ground, and covered 
with straw. He has abundance of cypresses, 
which, at three feet high, he sells for four 
pence apiece to those that take any number. 
He is moderate in his prices, and accounted 
very honest in his dealing, which gets him 
much chapmanry. 

27. Darby ^ at Hoxton, has but a little 
garden, but is master of several curious greens 
that other sale-gardeners want, and which he 
saves from cold and winter weather in green- 
houses of his own making. His Fritalaria 
Crassa (a green) had a flower on it of the 
breadth of a half crown, like an embroidered 
star, of several colours ; I saw not the like any 
where, no, not at Dr. Uvedale's, though he 
has the same plant. He raises many striped 
hollies by inoculation, though Captain Foster 
grafts them as we do apple trees. He is very 
curious in propagating greens, but is dear 
with them. He has a folio paper book in 
which he has pasted the leaves and flowers 
of almost all manner of plants, which make 
a pretty show, and are more instructive than 
any cuts in herbals. 



Appendix. 



241 



28. Clements^ at Mile-end, has no bigger a 
garden than Darby, but has more greens, yet 
not of such curious sorts. He keeps them in 
a greenhouse made with a light charge. He 
has vines in many places about old trees, which 
they wind about. He made wine this year of 
his white Muscadine, and white Frontinac, 
better I thought than any French white wine. 
He keeps a shop of seeds and plants in pots 
next the street. 



16 








INDEX. 



Abercrombie (John), 167, 168. 

Africa, 133. 

Alcinous, 188. 

Ale ialld)^ 136. 

Alexander^ a romance, 76. 

Alleyn (Edward), 120. 

America, 122, 123, 147, 168, 238. 

Anglo-Saxon culture of the vine, 131. 

Anne (Queen), 171. 

Antiquities of gardening, literary, \\ et seqq. 

Apothecaries' Company, 50, 

Apothecaries, ignorance of early, 47, 48. 

Apple-garth, 56. 

tart, 144. 

wine = cyder, 56. 

Apples, 86. 

sellers of, 116. 

Aprons, blue, 9. 
Arable and pasture, 178. 
Arboretum at Paddington, 176. 



244 Index. 

Arbours, 72 — 5. 

Arboyse grape, the, 185. 

Argyll (Archibald, Duke of), 199. 

Arlington Garden, 228. 

Arrack, 133. 

Artichokes, 36, 118. 

Ash-yard for hop-poles, 55. 

Asparagus, 36, 123, 124, 169, 170, 177. 

wild, 1 23,. 1 24. 

Astrology, ii, 12. 
Athens, 5. 
Auricula, 9. 
Austen (Ralph), 29, 30. 
Australia, South, 94. 

Babylon, 5. 

Bacon (Francis), 3, 25—9, 45, 60, 2>z, 90—114. I37» 

139, 147, 148, 182, 186—9. 
Barnes, Surrey, 23, 181. 
Barnet, East, 237. 
Barrels, plants transported in, 40. 
Battersea, 177, 178, i8i. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 141. 
Beddington, 67, 68, 226, 227, 230. 
Bedford Qohn Russell, Duke of), 69 — 71. 
Bedford (Lucy, Countess of), 186, 192 — 4, 
Bedford House, Bloomsbury, 200. 
Bee-culture, 53, 130. 
Beer, 36, 135—7. 
Bees, list of works on, 212, 213. 



Index. 245 

Bekker's Charicles and Gallics, 6. 

Berries (gooseberries, etc.), 123, 

Berry tribe prosperous northward, 43. 

Bethnal Green, 177. 

Bible, 3. 

Bibliography of Gardening Literature, 203 ir. 

Billingsgate, 133. 

Birch, 159. 

Black well (Mr. and Mrs.), 51. 

Bohn (H. G.), 215, 223. 

Bradbury (Henry), 224. 

Bradshaw (Jeffrey), of Bradford, 128. 

Brailsford (Mr.), his paper on Ancient Trees, 159. 

Bramshill, 49. 

Brathwaite (Richard), 30. 

Breton (Nicholas), 86 — 8 et passim. 

Brewing, 135—7. 

Bridgman, Kent, and Capability Brown, 191, 194 — 

202. 
Brigs (Mr. S.), 150. 
Bristol, 123. 
Britons, 4, 5. 

Brompton Park, 171, 237. 
Brompton, Old, 19, 132, 175 — 7, 
Broom, Spanish, 165. 
Brown {Capability), 191. 
Browne (William), A.M., 50. 
Browne's Shepherd's Pipe, 49. 
Buckingham Palace, 148. 
Bulbs, importation of, 44, 45. 



246 Index. 

Bunyan (John), 8. 

Burgundy grape, 185. 

Burleigh, Lord Exeter's seat, 24, 127, 128. 

Busino, Orazio, 24, 127, 128. 



Cabbages, 177. 

Csesar, 5. 

Campden House, Kensington, 132. 

Capell (Sir Henry), 230, 231, 

Caper tree, 132. 

Carews, 67, 68, 227. 

Carrot, II2, 113. 

Catalogues of gardens, early, 68. 

Camberwell, 180. 

Cameron (Commander), 133. 

Canker, the, 157. 

Castelvetri (Giacomo), 169. 

Caus (Isaac de), 16, 156. 

Cedars at Chelsea, 50. 

Celsa (mulberries ?), 59. 

Charles I., 35. 

Charles II., 129. 

Chatsworth, 218. 

Chelsea, 24, 50, 84, 149. 

Physic Garden at, 24, 50, 51, 227, 228. 

Cherries, 64, 137, 143, 185. 
Cherry, double flowering, 165. 
Cherry-fairs, 143. 
Chestnut, horse, 158. 



Index. 247 

Chestnut, sweet, 158. 
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 149. 
Child (Sir Josiah), 233. 
Chiswick, 181, 229, 232. 
Citrons, 151, 152. 
Claremont, 200. 
Clay used in grafting, 83. 
Clements of Mile-End, 241. 
Coaches, hackney and stage, 180. 
Cobham, gardens at, 16. 
Coleridge (S. T.), i. 

Colour changed by grafting and other processes, 83, 
109. 

of fruit, 137. 

Columella, 14. 

Coney-garth, 55. 

Conservatories, 51, 83, 84. 

Cooke (Sir Thomas), 232. 

Cookery, 8. 

Cottage-gardens, 81, 82. 

Cowdray Park, Midhurst, 158. 

Cromwell House, Old Brompton, 176. 

Cromwell (Oliver), 3, 176. 

Cr)rptogamic flora of Scotland, 216. 

Crystal Palace, 218. 

Culloden sword -blades, 19. 

Curiosities or subtleties, 82, 88, 89, 108 — lo. 

Curtis (Samuel and William), 213, 214. 

Curtis's Botanical Garden at Brompton, 175. 

Cyder, 56, 130, 133, 134. 



248 Index. 

Deptford, 181. 
Dethicke (Henry), 15. 
Devonshire (Duke of), 21 8. 
Diamond (Dr.), 17. 
Distillation, 132 — 7. 
Dixon (Hepworth), 18. 
Dodoens (Rembert), 47. 
Donne (Dr.), 186. 
Dormer (General), 198. 
Dulw'ich College, 120. 
Dunmow, Prior of, 140. 
Durham (Joseph), 18. 
Dutch asparagus, 123. 

gardens in England, 44, 

school, 19—21, 44, 45, 173, 174. 

Eagle, 60. 

Eden, garden of, 3, 188, 189. 

Edward I., 58. 

Elder, embroidered, 89. 

Eleanor of Castile, 58. 

Elizabeth (Queen), 45. 47. 

Ely House, 138. 

Enclosures and parterres, 153. 

Enfield, 234, 236, 237. 

Englefield (Sir Henry), 201. 

Esher, 200. 

Espaliers. 155. 

Essex, 131, 152. 

Essex Hcu.e, 129. 



Index. 249 

Evelyn (John), 2, 7—9, 24, 25, 30-3, 37—40, 50, 
51, 60, 67, 68, 82, 116, 117, 124, 129, 130, 146, 
165, 171, 236. 

Fauconbergh's (Lord) garden at Sutton Court, 229 

Felton (Samuel), 16, 17. 

Figs, 184. 

Finkel, 133. 

Fontainebleau, 184. 

Foote (Samuel), 35, 36. 

Forbes (James), 69 — 71. 

Forest-trees, 159. 

Forster (John), ofHanlop, 122. 

Forsyth (W.), 157- 

Foster (Captain), 238, 240. 

Fox (Sir Stephen), 232. 

French Gardener^ The. 30 — 37. 

grapes, 185. 

horticulture, 19, 59. 

wines, 129. 

Fritalaria Crassa, 240. 
Frontignac grapes, 185. 
Fruits, 57, 116, 161. 

lists of, in 1658. 

in Scotland, 43. 

Fruit-trees, 127 et seqq. 
Fulham, 19, 149, 177, 180, 200. 
Fuller (Thomas), 177, 178. 

Garden, 55. 



250 Index. 

Garden houses, 75. 
— — life, 72 — 7. 

the ancient English, 5. 

Gardeners, eminent, 65. 

farming, 180. 

iSardens near London in 1691, 6l ~8, 225 — 41. 

public and royal, 60 et seqq. 

Gardiner (Richard, of Shrewsbury), iii — 14. 

Garth, 55. 

Gascony, 184. 

Genoa, 121. 

George III., 157. 

Gelder-rose, 166. 

Gerard Qohn), 68, 118, 120, 139. 

Gibson's Account of the Gardens near London in 

1691, 66 — 8, 225 — 41. 
Gillyflower, 2, 56, 79. 
Glamorganshire, 88. 
Glasse (Mrs.), 8, 9. 
Gloucester (Duke oO> 138. 
Goffe (Nicholas), 147. 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, 58. 
Gorse, 163. 
Gower (John), 143. 
Grafting, 12, 19, 82, 83, 102, 103. 
Grafts, 61. 
Grapes, 24, 127, 128, 132, 184. 

branch of, 132. 

Gray and Wear, nurserymen, 171. 
Gray's Inn, no. 



Index, 251 



Greek horticulture, 6. 
Greenhouses, 51, 83, 84. 
Greenwich, 61. 
Gresham (Sir Thomas), 58. 
Greville (P. K.), 210 — 17. 
Grizzelin Frontignac grape, the, 185. 
Grottoes, 76. 
Gubbins, Herts, 195. 



Ha., Ha hedge, 195. 

Hackney, 49, 232. 

Ilagecius or Hajck (T.), 36, 135 — 7. 

Hagley, 189, 192. 

Hammersmith, Queen Dowager's garden at, 226. 

Hampton Court, 14, 131, 225, 226. 

Harris (Walter), 44. 

Harrison's Description of England, 22. 

Hawkins (Sir John), 17. 

Hazlitt (William), 81, 82. 

Heat, artificial, 26, 35, 83 — 5, 236. 

Heating apparatus, 83 — 5. 

Henrietta Maria, 62. 

Henry VI. 152. 

VH., 61, 137,145. 155- 

VIH., 61, 140. 

Henshaw (Thomas), 30. 
Herbals, 46—8, 51, 52. 

list of, 211, 212. 

Herbarists at Norwich, Society of, 150. 



252 Index, 

Herbert (Philip), Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, 

16. 
Herbs, kitchen, 15, 115. 

medicinal, 52. 

price of, 61. 

Herculaneum, 188. 

Herefordshire, orchards of, 135. 

Hertfordshire, 186, 192 — 5, 

Hesiod, 6. 

Hill (Thomas), 13 — 5, 130. 

Hindberry, or wild raspberry, 137. 

Holborn, 68, 120, 138, 143. 

Holland, 44, 123, 124, 178. 

Holly, variegated, Z%. 

Honey, 53. 

Hooke's Micrograpkia, 160. 

Hookers, the, 65, 71, 223. 

Hop-poles, 22, 23. 

Hop-yards, 22, 23. 

Hops, 22, 23. 

Hortus siccus, 240. 

Hot-beds, 83. 

Hoxton, 239, 240. 

Hughes (W.), 129, 130. 

Hyacinth, the, 45. 

1 1 ford, Essex, 131. 

India, 146. 

Ingestry House, Old Brompton, 1 76. 

Ingleby (Dr.), 131. 



Index. 253 



Ireland, 121, 122. 
Italian figs, 184. 



Jam, 37. 

James I., 147. 

Jardhi, 55, 

Jargonelles, 2. 

Jeaffreson, Cordy, 18. 

Jessamine, 165. 

Johannes de Garlandia, 59, 60, 68, 161. 

John the Gardetier, ii. 

Johnson (Dr.), 8, 60. 

Johnson, Thomas, the botanist, 205. 

Jucca or Yucca, 165. 

Jugglers in London, 106 — 8. 

Yitxvaeiih Parochial Antiquities, 49, 156. 
Kensington, 19, 174, 175. 

Gardens, 226, 237. 

Kent, 179. 

Kent the gardener, 191, 194 — 202. 

Kew, 230, 231. 

Gardens, 65. 

Kirke's Nursery, 132, 175, 176. 
Kitchen-garden, the, 54 et seqq. 

Lamb (Charles), i, 2, 42. 
Lambert (General), 2, 3. 
Lambeth, 238. 



2 54 Indey, 

Lambeth Palace garden, 234. 
La Serre (Olivier de), 147. 
Lee (John), nurseryman, 174. 
Leek, 55, 56. 
Lemon, 26. 

juice used for scurvy, 125. 

Lemons, preserved, 151. 

Le Nautre, 193. 

Leprosy, 125. 

Lincoln (Earl of), 138, 143. 

Lincolnshire, 124. 

Lindley (George and John), 215, 216. 

Lindley (Dr. James), 128. 

Lisle (Lord), 131. 

L'Obel (Matthieu de), 49. 

London (George), 171. 

London (William), 172. 

London and Wise, nurserymen, 171 — 3, 194, 208, 237. 

London, Bishop of, his garden at Fulham, 200. 

environs, of, celebrated for vegetables, 24, 1 19, 

169. 

street-life of, in Bacons time, 106 — 8. 

window-gardening in early, 79, 80. 

Longleat, 200. 

Loudon (J. C.)} 217 — 24. 

(Mrs.), 7, 220—3. 

Low Countries, 185, 193. 
Lucas (Joseph), 55, 159. 
Lysons, 177 — 81. 
Lyte (Henry), 47. 



Index, 255 

Macer's Herbal, 46. 
Main (James), 221. 
Manure, Bacon's experiments with, 91 — 5. 

■ various kinds of, 91 — 5. 
Marden, Surrey, 233. 
Market-gardens, 169 et seqq. 
Mascall (Leonard), 19 — 21. 
Matthews (Mrs.), i. 
Mazes, 14. 

Mead or metheglin, 133. 
Medlar, 145. 
Melons, 34 — 6. 

Middlemist's Cape Nurseiy, 1 76. 
Midhurst, Sussex, 158. 
Mile End, 241. 
Miller's Dictionary, 220. 
Milton Qohn), 189, 192. 
Mint or aigre-douce, 162. 
Mitcham, 52. 

Montpelier Tea-gardens at Walworth, 81 — 2. 
Moor Park, 186, 192 — 4. 
More (Sir Thomas), 100. 
Mortlake, i8i. 
Mosses, 160. 
Mowing, 85. 
Mulberry, 59, 147. 
Mulberry Garden, 148. 
Munster (Bishop of), his cherry orchard, 185. 
Murray (Lord), 223. 
Muscadine, 241. 



256 Index. 

Muscat, black. 185. 

or Frontignac grapes, 184. 

Mustard, 59. 
Myrtle, 26, 227. 



Names of flowers, etc., Saxon and Norman, 56. 

Nature-printed Ferns and Sea-weeds, 224. 

Nash's Mansions of the Olden Time, 49. 

Neckam (Alexander), 56 — 8, 79. 

Newbery's Dives Fragmaticus, 34. 

Nidderdale, 159. 

Nivernois (Due de), 187. 

Nonsuch, 192. 

Norway, 133. 

Norwich, 150. 

Nottingham, 172. 

Nurserymen at Old Brompton, 175, 176. 

Occupations, gardening, 85 — 8. 
Onion, 115, 116, 144. 

seller, 116. 

Spanish, ii6. 

Orange, 26, 57, 58, 230, 231. 
Orange trees at Sheen, 185, 230. 

at Kew, 231. 

Orangery at Beddinglon, 67, 68, 227, 230. 
Orchard, 54. 
Oxford, 50. 
Oxfordshire, 156. 



Index, 257 

Paddington, 176. 

Paris, 32, 59, 60. 

Passe (Crespin de) the elder and younger, 45. 

Pasture converted into plough-land, 178. 

Paxton (Sir Joseph), 218. 

Peach, 94, 116, 138, 142, 143, 1 84. 

flowering, 165. 

October, 142. 

Pears, 2, 31— 3, 142, I43- 

Warden, 140, 141. 

Pearson, a nurseryman at Iloxton, 239. 
Peas, 117, 118, 178, 179. 

buttered, 179. 

Parkinson (John), 1 18. 

Parks, public, 63. 

Peppermint, 52. 

Pepys (S.), 40- 

Percy family, encouragement of gardening by, 219. 

Perry, 135. 

Persica (peach ?), 143. 

Petrus de Crescentiis, 7. 

Phoenix, 60. 

Physic gardens, 24, 48 — 52. 

Pine apple, 144, 145. 

Pines, kernels of, used instead of olives, 152. 

Piatt (Sir Hugh), 49. 

Pollard's school at Old Brompton, 176. 

Pombe, 133. 

Pome de orange^ 58. 

Pomegranate, 146. 

17 



258 Index. 

Pope (A.), 6S, 198. 
Porkington MS., 12. 
Potato, the, 121— 3, 133. 

liquor distilled from, 1 33. 

Pottle of strawberries, 62, ()i, 139, 140. 
Prejudices and errors of gardeners, 104, 105. 
Promphiar'mm Faj'vuiorum, 9. 
Pruning, 43. 

Quinby, 140, 141. 
Quince, 121, 143—5' 

Raleigh (Sir Walter), 120, 128. 
Randolph (Thomas), 62. 
Ranelagh's (Lord) garden, 228. 
Raspberry, 137, 138. 
Raynton (Mr.), 237. 
Reformation, 141. 
Rei RustioB Script or es^ 6, 7. 
Reid (John), 42, 43. 
Removal of trees, 49. 
Rhubarb, 150, 151. 
Ribston pippin, 157. 
Rice, distillations from, 133. 
Richardson (Mr.), 237. 
Ricketts of Hoxton, 239. 
Rose (John), 129, 130. 
Roses, 161, 166, 167. 
Rousham, 19S. 



Index. 259 

Saffron, 152. 

Saffron-Walden, 152. 

St. James's Palace, 129, 148. 

St. Regie, pear of, 142. 

St. Vincent, Abbey of, 19. 

Sandwich (Earl of), letter of Evelyn to, 116, 117, 

124, 146. 
Sandwich, Kent, 179. 
Scotish cryptogamic flora, 216, 217. 

horticulture, 42, 43. 

Scurvy, 125. 

Seeds and plants brought from America and the West 

Indies, 24. 
Seedsmen, fraudulent, in 1603, 113. 
Shakespeare (W.), 138—41, 166, 188. 
Sheen, royal garden at, 61. 

Sir W. Temple's garden at, 64, 131, 1S2 — 6. 

Shepherd's Bush, 176. 
Shropshire, in — 13. 
Silk, manufacture of, 147. 
Silkworm, cultivation of the, 147. 
Simpson's at Billingsgate, 133. 
Sion House, 177. 
Sir Cli'ges, a romance, 77. 
Sloane (Sir Hans), 50. 
Somerset, Duchess of, 129. 

House garden, 62, 63. 

the Protector, 63. 

Southwell (Sir Robert), 122. 
Sowerbys, the, 214, 215. 



26o Index. . 

Spanish influence, 58. 

potato, 123. 

Squire of Loiu Degree, 72. 

Stanley (James, Earl of Derby), 50. 

Stephens (Philip), 50. 

Stourhead, 190, 192. 

Stoves, 51, 83, 84. 

Strand Inn, 63. 

Strawberries, 29, 61,62, 137 — 40, 170, 184, 185. 

Street life of London, early, 106 — 8. 

Sugar, 53. 

Summer-houses, 75, 76. 

Surrey, 17— 19. 23, 8r, 82, 144, 177, 178, 181, 233. 

Sutton Court, Chiswick, 229. 

Sweet (Robert), 217. 

Swift (Jonathan), 65, 183. 

Sylva Sylvariim^ Bacon's extracts from, 91 — iii. 

Tallard (Count), 172. 
Tea-gardens at Walworth, 81, 82. 
Telephone, the, 160. 
Temple (Sir John), 230. 

(Sir William), 2, 6, 64, 131, 182 — 6, 189, 192—4, 

230. 
Tennyson's Talking Oak, 159. 
Thames Street, Upper, 149. 
Thatch or matting used for protecting plants, 83. 
Theobalds, 192. 
Thornes (Edward), iii, 112. 
Thyme, Assyrian, 239. 



Index, 261 



Tillotson (Archbishop), 235. 
Tobacco, 49. 

Tools, gardening, 153, 154. 
Training of trees, 153, 155. 
Trees, ancient, 159. 

lists of, 140 et passim. 

Tulips, 2, 161, 164. 

Turf, ancient, 18. 

Turner (William), 46—8, 53. 

Twickenham, 198. 

House, 17 — 19. 

Uvedale (Dr.), 235, 240. 

Valentines, Ilford, 131. 

Variegation of foliage, 88, 89. 

Varro, 6, 14. 

Vauxhall, 133. 

Vegetable marrow, 176, 177. 

Vegetables, 22, 34, 54 ct seaq., 177 — 81. 

• high prices of, in 1619, 119, 120. 

salted, 124. 

sanitary value of, 125. 

Venice, 49 note. 

Venner (Dr.), 122. 

Versailles, 193. 

Verulam Buildings, IIO, III. 

Vesprit (M.), 239. 

Via ordinaire^ 128. 

Vine, the, 127 d seqq. 



262 Index. 

Vines, I2g — 32. 
Vintners' Hall, 149. 
Virgil, 6. 

Virginia, 122, 123, 148. 
birds of, 238. 

Wales, 56, 88, 122. 
Walnut-trees at Wanstead, 233. 
Walpole (Horace), 2, 182, 186 — 202. 
Walter de Biblesworth, 86, 163. 
Walworth, 81, 82. 
Wandle river, 144. 
Wanstead, 233. 
Warden pear, 140, 141. 

pie, 140, 141. 

Water lily, 164. 

Water pipes, 234. 

Water pot, 154. 

Watts (Mr.), 51, 236. 

West Indian trees, 199. 

West of England, 139. 

Westminster, royal garden at, 138, 143. 

Weston (Richard), 25. 

Weymouth pine, the, 200. 

Wheatley(H. B.), 63. 

White (Gilbert), 125. 

William in., 65, 171, 183. 

Willow, 158. 

Wilton Garden, 16, 156. 

Wimbledon, 2. 



Index. 263 

Window-gardening, 78 — So. 
Windsor pears, 2. 
Wine, 127, 128, 131, 132. 
Wines, French, 129. 

home-made, 127, 128, 176, 241. 

prices of in 1524 and 1584, 128, 129. 

■ sweet, 129. 

Wise (Henry), 171. 
Withy, 158. . 

Woburn Abbey, 69 — 71. 
Woodall (John), 125, 126. 
Woolner (Richard, R.A.), 18. 

Worlidge (John), 40—2, 80, 81, 83, 88, 89, 122, 
123, 130, 133—5, 158, 164, 165. 

Yard = garth, 55. 
Yorkshire, 124, 128. 

Zouch (Lord), 48, 49. 






4I^^^IP>' 




